


people are strange but maybe you're stranger

by petrichoke



Category: Beetlejuice (1988), Beetlejuice (TV 1989), Beetlejuice - Fandom
Genre: Age Difference, Anal Fingering, Anal Hook, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Bondage, Come Swallowing, Creampie, Cunnilingus, Deepthroating, Dubcon Cuddling, F/M, Public Blow Jobs, Rope Bondage, Semi-Public Sex, Size Difference, dubcon? maybe noncon?, tagged it just in case - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-08 08:26:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21473011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petrichoke/pseuds/petrichoke
Summary: He’d heard his name. Someone had called out his name. More specifically, a female someone had moaned his name. And please. As in, “please, Betelgeuse”. He instantly sparked up. Saying his name once wouldn’t release him from this hellhole, but it sure as fuck would give him enough energy to do something. And doing something could release him... maybe. But it was more hope than he’d had in a couple of years, and that was better than nothing. He could slip from mirror to mirror inside the house now -- and he jumped from room to room, hoping to find the lucky bitch who’d said his name. And holy fuck.It was Lydia.
Relationships: Beetlejuice/Lydia Deetz
Comments: 10
Kudos: 167





	people are strange but maybe you're stranger

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for a while :) it's my first fanfic! and I decided to simply go ahead and post what I've written. I have more ideas for stuff I want to write (shorter ideas thank GOD) and I might continue with this story, but I wanted some sense of termination with the damn thing so I'm finally posting it. 
> 
> Come find me on tumblr at **creamofbeetle**!

Lydia sneezed.

The house was super, super dusty. After the “incident”, the only way her parents referred to Betelgeuse’s visit to their house, the Maitlands had stuck around until she graduated from high school. Having raised a child, in some sense of the word, their unfinished business on earth was complete and they were allowed to move on. Lydia had returned from her graduation party to find the house empty and cold. 

Her parents sent her off to UCLA without much ceremony, and returned to New York where Delia could be near other artists. Charles had retired but with his collection of property was well-off enough to put Lydia through college without any student loans, although she got a job to pay for her personal expenses out of a sense of personal integrity.

She’d graduated a month ago with a B.A. in photography, a little money saved, and no idea of what to do next. Her dad suggested that she move to New York (no way) and Delia thought she should stay in Los Angeles (absolutely not). Lydia had decided to return to Winter River. It had been the first place where she’d really begun to take a strong interest in photography. Maybe returning to her roots would bring her out of her artistic block? Also, she wouldn’t need to pay rent, which could save her a lot of money while she tried to get a foothold in the photography business. She really wanted to make a living through it, but knew that that would take a lot of work, luck, time, and money. 

The house had been empty for the past four years but it looked like it had been empty for much longer. The strange mishmash of Delia and the Maitlands remained -- Lydia had forgotten how jarring the decor was. Flowery curtains and calming pastels in the kitchen contrasted nauseatingly with the rough stone-like furniture and the strange modern mood lighting in the living room. 

Lydia hadn’t brought much, as the cheapest plane ticket from LA to Connecticut had increased the price of her ticket by fifty dollars for just one checked bag, let alone the number she’d need to bring the stuff she’d collected over four years of studio apartment living. She’d only had room in her carry-on to bring had her clothes and her photography equipment, so she’d certainly need to do a lot of shopping to make the house livable, and she’d need to get a full-time job to pay for her expenses while she tried to get her photography off the ground.

Lydia dumped her suitcase on the ground and pulled her laptop out of her bag, thumping down at the stained wooden kitchen table. She checked job websites for listings in Winter River and came up with a couple of options: an opening at a cafe on the main road, another at the grocery store, and one at the hardware store. None of them paid very well, but she would basically only need to worry about buying groceries and photography-related expenses. She still had her old bike from high school and it was in decent repair so she wouldn’t even need a car. 

She sent in her resume to each of the jobs and biked out to the grocery store to pick up cleaning supplies and some basic necessities like food and toiletries.

Lydia returned armed to the teeth. She worked all day to strip the house to its bare essentials, piling the stuff she no longer wanted outside. The house didn’t have air conditioning, and the early July air was brutally hot and humid. She stopped often to drink cool water or press a wet cloth to the back of her neck, and eventually she gave up and stripped down to her bra and a pair of shorts to finish up the work. The house ended up decently clean and also quite empty, mostly gleaming smooth hardwood floors and strangely-colored walls, which she’d need to paint. Most traces of the Maitlands and of Delia were gone. She’d kept some furniture, but only the stuff without much personality. She didn’t want to spend the next chunk of her life steeped in the past. 

Lydia had left the attic alone. Didn’t most houses have gross attics anyway? She didn’t see the point in bothering and didn’t want to deal with the model or the memories she knew would be up there.

She checked her laptop again and found that the cafe had responded, asking her to come in for an interview the next morning at nine. Looking at the time, she found that it was already eleven p.m. She fired off an email confirming that she would be there and thanking them for their generosity, and went upstairs to her old room. She took a quick shower, braided her hair into two sections, and went right to sleep, setting her alarm for seven.

Lydia woke up slowly, feeling groggy and a little confused. She’d had another weird sex dream -- vivid stripes and snake scales floated vaguely in her mind. After the “incident”, she’d had nightmares on and off for a while. Eventually, as time softened the experience and the rift between her parents and her widened, the dreams had changed in nature from fear to sex. She’d known she had daddy issues or something of the sort for a while, and she also knew her preferences were a little bizarre. This melded with the power Betelgeuse had displayed and the fear she’d felt to become a series of really bizarre wet dreams. Thankfully they didn’t happen often.

She washed her face and got dressed, choosing black jeans and a black tee. She’d never grown out of the goth phase like her parents had hoped, which had been difficult sometimes in the California desert. Lydia brushed her hair back and applied black lipstick.

Lydia went downstairs and drank black tea. She’d forgotten to get anything to put on the bread she’d bought. No butter, no jam, no peanut butter, no nutella, no honey, no nothing. The only things in the fridge were extremely expired, so she threw them out.

She put her camera and laptop in her bag and cycled off to the cafe. It hadn’t changed at all in the four years she’d been gone, although there surely now had to be someone working there other than the two ancient ladies who’d run it during her high school years. How else could they have been so active online? Didn’t old ladies generally struggle with computers and the internet and stuff like that?

Lydia walked in a bit early. The cafe was still empty -- of people, as it was still stuffed with armchairs, mismatched tables, doilies, ancient yellowed books and board games, and dirty, barely recognizable paintings. It was warm, but thankfully not as warm as outside, and the air smelled deliciously of cookies, coffee, and herbal incense. 

She set her bag on a puffy purple armchair and called out a hello as she walked up to the counter. 

“I’ll be right with you!” said someone in the back. They were clearly not Agnes or Martha, as the voice was distinctly male. “Please go ahead and sit down somewhere -- you are the new hire, right? Do you want anything to drink?”

“Yes I am! And a cup of your citrus chamomile tea would be wonderful, thank you,” Lydia said. She wondered who the young man was. If the shop already had a new employee, they shouldn’t be looking for another one. Winter River was a small enough town that a tiny tea shop like this could exist just fine with only three employees, but they were advertising for a new full time position -- why?

A young man with brown hair and a bad shave walked into the room. He was holding two cups of tea and a plate with a few vienna cookies on it.

“I love the citrus chamomile,” he said, handing one mug to her and setting down the plate. “You must be Lydia.”

Lydia nodded, and blew on her cup of steaming tea, setting it down on the table in front of her.

“You might be a little confused as to who I am or as to why this position is available. Are you from Winter River?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Lydia. “I just moved back after college. I used to go to this shop all the time during high school. I remember that Agnes and Martha ran it. I hope you don’t mind my asking, but who are you? Are they alright?”

“Oh god, I’m so sorry. You must be so confused, or worried, or something -- they’re alright! They’re just retiring. They’ve been running the shop for a super super long time, and they want to step back. They’re looking for a couple of new employees they can trust. I’m their grand-nephew, and they asked me to do the hiring. I’m leaving in August for college but my mom said I should help them out before then.”

Lydia nodded. “It’s great that you’re helping them out. They were very nice to me during high school.” She picked up her tea, which had cooled to a reasonable drinking temperature, and took a big gulp.

“So you probably understand the job: we’d need you to come in from ten to six from Monday to Friday. You’d make tea and coffee, wrap cookies, clean the shop, run the register, and bake. You’d get free food every shift. Do you have previous experience in food service?”

“Yeah. I worked as a barista throughout college.”

“Awesome! Do you have any questions for me?”

“Yes,” Lydia said. “How many other employees will there be? And how many will run the shop at once? What’s my starting salary?”

“I already hired one person, and I’m going to hire two more in the next week. We want at least one person in the shop at one time, so we’re hoping to have three part-time employees and one full-time employee. Each part time employee will work fifteen to twenty-five hours a week, so if people need days off, there will be plenty of support in place. And seventeen dollars an hour.”

“And I’m the full-time employee?”

He nodded. “I’ll be helping out for the first week, but the sooner I can leave and have a real summer vacation, the better.” He laughed. “Are you interested in the position? You seem very qualified, and we’d love to have you.”

Lydia smiled widely. “Absolutely. When do I start?”

“Come next week at ten! I’ll train you on the job -- the part-time employees will be trained over the course of the week as soon as they’re scheduled to come in.”

“Thank you so much!” Lydia gulped down the last of her tea, taking a cookie and grabbing her bag. “I’ll see you then.”

On the way home, Lydia swung by the cemetery where she had spent so much time during high school. It was an old one, long-ago closed to new bodies. The gravestones were weathered enough that few names were legible any more -- they were simply too cracked, mossy, overgrown. It was deeply picturesque, and much of Lydia’s portfolio for college applications had been from the plots here. 

Lydia spent a few hours wandering among the graves and taking photographs. It felt good to return to such a familiar place. This sparked some deep sense of nostalgia, which started her thinking about the Maitlands. Lydia decided to go visit their graves. She biked to the newer cemetery, only fifteen miles away, stealing a couple of flowers from neighbor’s gardens on the way. She left the flowers in front of their gravestones and stood with her head bowed for a few seconds. Then she walked out to the main path of the cemetery and sat down on a cement bench. What was she doing? The Maitlands had been so certain of what their path in life was: parenthood in a tiny town in Connecticut, a fixer-upper house, love. They had been strong for each other even after death, and had loved her like she was their own child. It was close to having real parents, but honestly too late. Charles’s fourteen years of crappy parenting couldn’t be undone, no matter how hard they had tried.

And they’d tried hard! Lydia loved them for it. She was so deeply grateful that she’d been able to have loving parents for four years, and she still missed them. But that didn’t mean that she was as put-together as they were --despite the front they sometimes presented, in some ways, they were very put-together. At least, they were certain of their path through life in a way she wasn’t.

Everyone from UCLA had gone off to a job, or to internships, or to volunteer in third-world countries. They’d gone to Europe, to New York, to Asia. They’d stayed in California and grinned as they talked about their futures. They’d talked of marriage and children and ten-year plans. Lydia had smiled politely and asked questions and congratulated and then quietly moved back to her parents’ house (one of their houses, and not one with her parents in it, but still). 

Lydia knew she wanted to do photography. But she didn’t know how to make money off of it. Maybe she should’ve taken more business courses in college -- read, any business courses. Whoops.

When Lydia got home she was sweaty and disgusting. She dragged her bike up onto the porch and left it leaning against the railing. Lydia looked out at the pile of garbage she had dumped on the hill. At some point, I’ll need to call to get rid of it, but not now -- now it’s time for a shower. 

Lydia left her bag at the bottom of the staircase and ran up. She turned the shower knob to cold and shed her clothes, jumping in. She shampooed her hair and scrubbed her body smooth. 

Looking down at her legs, she realized that she was growing a fine crop of hair. She kind of enjoyed the smooth feeling of freshly shaved legs, so she grabbed her razor and set to it, shaving her armpits and pussy while she had it out.

She toweled herself off and braided up her hair, slathered herself with shea butter and coconut oil, and then put on an oversized tee with a print of Marilyn Manson on it.

Lydia grabbed her bag from the base of the stairs and brought it up to settle with her on the bed. She pulled out her camera and spent a while looking through photos, uploading promising ones to her computer and then beginning to do some editing. She was pretty behind, despite not having taken any photos in a while (lazy lazy! her inner critic yelled).

After a few hours, Lydia’s stomach growled very audibly. She grabbed one-handed for her phone beside her, looked up a chinese place, and ordered sweet and sour chicken, rice, and spring rolls.

When her doorbell rang, Lydia grabbed her wallet and struggled into a pair of pants from her suitcase, open on the ground next to her bed. After paying and tipping the delivery guy, she ate way too much chinese food on her bed. Feeling super full and kind of gross, she turned on an old horror movie on her laptop and, inadvertently, went to sleep.

Lydia couldn’t see anything. She was blindfolded, probably, by the feel of rough cloth on her face. She was kneeling with her face pressed into the scruffy black comforter of her bed, being roughly slammed into from behind by whoever was holding down her tied hands, pushing a decent amount of weight onto her back. She squirmed, but couldn’t push the guy off her enough to even move her head to a more comfortable position. The large ball gag filling her mouth and causing her to drool uncontrollably was making it hard enough to breathe without being mashed into the mattress. The guy shoved her legs further apart with his knees, stilling with his cock inside her. It felt almost uncomfortably large, and she squeezed a bit around him just to feel him twitch in response, seeming to rearrange her insides with the rigid length he had pressed into her. He slapped her ass hard, for daring to do so. It went straight to her core, making her shiver a little. 

“How’re ya doing there, babes?” he growls. “Ya seem a little... uncomfortable. We can’t have that, can we? C’mon.”

He reaches under her stomach and between her legs, stroking her clit almost maddeningly gently. When he pulls away, the stroking continues, slowly, incessantly. She wriggles, humping back onto his unnaturally still cock. His free hand grabs her hip and stills her with inhuman strength. 

“Ya want this thick cock, huh babes? I didn’t know ya liked it so kinky! What if your precious daddy could see this, huh?”

Lydia can feel slick wetness creeping down one thigh. It would tickle, but she’s too turned on. The slow stroking is driving her mad. She mumbles out a please behind the gag. 

“What was that?” He leans forward to fiddle with the strap behind her head. This shifts him within her and he hits something amazing, making her squeak and clench her fists, her thighs shaking a little.

He draws the ballgag out of her mouth and drops it next to her on the bed. She stays silent, so he slaps her ass again, in the very same place as before, but even harder this time. It hurts like a motherfucker, and she cries out loudly. His cold hand soothes her stinging asscheek.

“What was that. I’m not fuckin’ askin’ again.”

“Please,” she says, quietly.

“Please what?” he says, making a mockery of her voice. “Please, daddy? Please, master? Please, sir?” At the same time, he pulls out and slams into her, hitting that sweetly tender spot so deep inside of her.

“Please, Betelgeuse!” she screams, and he rides her to a delicious, powerful orgasm. 

Betelgeuse, after he’d so royally misjudged Barbara Maitland, passed through a sandworm, and then spent half a decade in the waiting room, had been returned to his grave by Juno and stripped of most of his powers. It would take someone saying his name close nearby to revive him (there wasn’t anything that the powers-that-be could do about that particular curse, try as they might to incapacitate him), which was, of course, deeply unlikely to happen in this particular household, much less within hearing distance of the model. 

He was stuck lying inside a fuckin’ coffin for the rest of goddamn eternity. Do you know how hard it is to scratch your nose when you’re inside of a coffin? Pretty fuckin’ hard is the answer. He spent most of his time in a sort of doze, thinking about hot babes he’d had sex with, and planning increasingly horrific revenge stories for when he’d get out. He didn’t lose faith that he would. It had taken a long time for him to get out the first time, but get out he had, and he would do it again.

That doze suddenly ended. He’d heard his name. Someone had called out his name. More specifically, a female someone had moaned his name. And please. As in, “please, Betelgeuse”. He instantly sparked up. Saying his name once wouldn’t release him from this hellhole, but it sure as fuck would give him enough energy to do something. And doing something could release him... maybe. But it was more hope than he’d had in a couple of years, and that was better than nothing. He could slip from mirror to mirror inside the house now -- and he jumped from room to room, hoping to find the lucky bitch who’d said his name. And holy fuck.

It was Lydia.

Lydia, who was currently flushed and twitching in her sleep. 

With this level of power, he couldn’t exert any control over the living world, but he could over the dreamscape -- it was a sort of middle ground between the living world and the Neitherworld. He also knows that he’ll also be able to hop to mirrors within a short distance, thanks to the boost he’s been given. A classic Bloody Mary ghost power.

What the fuck was Lydia doing anyway that had made her say his name? He peered a little closer. She didn’t look scared -- bummer. Wait, maybe not. She looked... flushed?

Lydia let out a gasp. She moved a little on the bed.

Was she having some creepy gothy wet dream? About him? He knew he was good -- but that good? Holy shit. He had to see this for himself. He concentrated, and slid carefully into Lydia’s dreamscape.

Ooh, that was weird. It was him, but cleaner and nicer looking. He was riding her hard, but still kind of gentlemanly by his standards. Lydia was tied up neatly with a blindfold on and her ass sticking up in the air. She seemed close to orgasm, judging by how she was moaning and how her thighs were shaking. She slipped a little and clean-him hauled her back up, grabbing her hips tightly and fucking her deeply. He was vaguely pleased with the fact that she seemed so happy with him, or some version of him. This was still kind of fucked up though.

But hey, if she wanted clean, nice Betelgeuse, and if that alone could make her say his name? He’d be out within a week.

He was not out within a week. Lydia spent a lot of time working and not much time sleeping, and thus it was hard to catch her in the middle of a dream. He’d forgotten how tough it could be to tell when a breather was really having a dream and not just restless or in a deeper sleep stage. It had been so damn long since he’d been able to sleep that it took him a while to remember how people did it.

He was able to creep on her a little bit. She never really unpacked, despite having made some sort of attempt to clean the house, which was still disgustingly dirty around the edges. He wasn’t going to complain, though. Who gives a fuck about a little dirt when you’ve literally been buried in it for centuries? And, more importantly, because Lydia was still living out of her suitcase, she left her clothes strewn around the room. And clothes definitely included underwear.

Lydia had always had a strong sense of personal style, and part of her idea of self-care was choosing to buy beautiful, high-quality, expensive items when she went shopping. Delia, also a fashion-conscious woman, had given her a couple of pieces of advice when she’d left for college.

“I know you’re going to be a poor college student now, since you wouldn’t let Charles give you an allowance -- hear me out, hear me out -- but whatever you do, make sure you buy high-quality shoes and underwear. They really make a difference. It’s worth the money to have two nice bras rather than five crappy ones. No boy likes saggy boobs! No, I know you don’t care, but it’s just something to keep in mind.” Then she’d winked.

Lydia had been a little weirded out by Delia’s effort to support both her breasts and her sex life, but she’d tried to follow it. She wanted to treasure herself. Life was hard enough already, and death would be worse, so why not spend a little time and money to make the right-now nice? She worked hard to take care of the things she had and to make them last, and they felt worth it. 

Basically, Lydia had really nice underwear. Betelgeuse was amazed at how sexy it was. It certainly had changed a lot since the last time he’d been out -- never mind that the only woman he’d had access to (Barbara didn’t count as all her stuff had been sold when she’d died) was Delia and Delia had unique taste. 

Lydia had some great stuff: a lacy, understated but also see-through black set (that one was fucking hot. Something about the idea of her pale skin and peeling wet black lace off her?), some fun pieces: red, white, nude, lace, silk, even one with a pentagram of straps across her bare ass. He spent a day hidden in the mirror thinking about that one after he’d seen her stripping out of a shapeless black dress to reveal smooth pale thighs and her very nice butt bare except for the bondage-esque pattern of straps.

He wanted to fuck her in the ass, okay. He’d admit it. He thought anal was awesome, and it was, at least for him. There was something so deliciously violating about forcing your way into a girl’s asshole when her cunt was just below, empty (usually) and wanting. It was mean but he liked it when it hurt them. You didn’t have to worry with Neitherworld girls, given that they were dead, and after you were dead, all of your senses sort of dulled a bit. Things felt less, and colors were greyer. Betelgeuse couldn’t even hear birdsong any more. After a bit, you mostly forgot how things used to feel, but the desire to experience the world so intensely again never really went away.

It also turned out that Lydia has a very healthy sex life. With herself. Every night, Betelgeuse has to watch her set up her laptop with some video, or listen to her play some recording from her phone, and then watch her get off, noisily. She’s got good taste, according to him. Her choice of topic varies, but she seems to come back to submission over and over, and he can get her into the rest of the shit he likes through that. He likes the pornos too but prefers watching her. She’s usually cloaked in a big shapeless t-shirt, but he adores the glimpses of upper thigh that he gets when she moves or arches her back or... or....

He’s been jerking off too much. Does such a thing exist? He licks his cum off of his palm behind the mirror as Lydia shudders through an orgasm to a tape about some bitch dressing up like a dog and getting bred. It’s finally Friday. He’s been watching her cross days off the calendar she pinned onto the wall, and he knows that she won’t start work until Monday. Hopefully this means that she’ll finally sleep long enough to get a good dream in -- it’s the fucking weekend, bitches! Damn but she’s been hard to pin down (although he has been somewhat lazy about it). It’s been a long time since he had any freedom, okay? But he’s going to sit, and he’s not going to jerk off again, and he’s going to make sure that he catches her this time. Because if she doesn’t set him free, he’ll have to kill her. That’s just life.

Lydia has had a very boring week. Despite having the time to do so, she hasn’t finished cleaning the house after the indiscriminately sometimes-deep sometimes-ineffective sometimes-utterly-forgotten cleaning job she did, but she did get all the crap outside carted away. She spent a lot of time in the cemetery, or walking around Winter River, or ordering takeout and binge-watching old horror movies. One day she’d even biked to the thrift shop in the town over, twenty miles away. The next day she’d had to stay home and soak her aching muscles in a bath filled with epsom salts, but she’d scored a couple of good pieces, as well as a few new mugs, a poster, and a t-shirt with a picture of the original cover/poster for the House on Haunted Hill on it (a great find). 

She hadn’t slept much, but she sure had spent a lot of time horizontal on her bed. It was great to be in your own house, not in a crowded dorm with thin walls, or a crappy apartment with even thinner walls. She could play whatever she wanted and be as loud as she liked. Lydia kind of liked being an exhibitionist, and the idea that she was performing for someone got her off even harder, so it was great to be able to move freely and make as much noise as she wanted.

Lydia also bought a lot of tea. One of the saddest things she’d had to sell to make the move back to Connecticut from Los Angeles was her extensive set of teas. Lydia didn’t really drink coffee, since it made her too jittery, but she loved tea and had owned a wide collection of funky flavors and staples. She’d brought some tea boxes and her infuser, but she needed the tea. It was going to take a long time to replace a four-year-old collection, but she’d found most of the basics in and around Winter River. She had had to turn to bougie online shops for the rest of it, but had found a ton of interesting new flavors she really wanted to try, and spent a chunk of money getting it shipped to her door. It would still take a while to arrive -- an unavoidable pain in the ass.

Finally it was Friday. She knew she’d need to get back onto a normal sleep schedule. She’d been sleeping in little three or four hour chunks on her bed or on the couch or in the armchair she’d dragged out of Charles’s study. That kind of lifestyle isn’t really viable when you’re working a job during normal day hours. So Lydia spent all of Friday awake, making sure to go for a long bike ride and spend time outside to help reset her clock. At ten, she went to bed. 

Lydia had always felt that a good orgasm sent her off to sleep better. Maybe that was supposed to be a guys-only thing, but it worked for her, placebo or not. She lay down on top of the blankets and drew her ratty grey t-shirt up, uncovering her breasts. She pinched one of her nipples experimentally, then cupped her breast and squeezed it. She was too cold for this shit. Why was her room freezing? It was July. It shouldn’t be this cold. Lydia pulled her shirt back down and grabbed her phone. For shits and giggles, she looked up “why is my room cold” and got predictably shitty and inapplicable answers. 

Lydia sighed and switched over to private mode. She was feeling like a little petplay. Maybe forced breeding? With like a breeding bench? She searched “story audio petplay forced breeding bench”. The third response looked promisingly bad: a recorded story of a girl turned into a bitch and forced to bear puppies. Not usually her thing, but she was in a mood tonight. She licked her fingers and drew them up her slit. The recording played, telling the tale of a stereotypically nerdy and closed-off girl finding her passion (figuratively and literally) through being dressed up like a puppy and controlled. 

It went wrong, of course. Nothing like a little misogynistic sluts-will-be-punished “morality” with your nut. The girl was sold/captured and bred to another “dog” and forced to have puppies. It was a little gross, but when you’re horny it doesn’t really matter so much how nasty something is, as long as you’re kinda into it. This was nasty, but it definitely did the trick. Lydia spread her legs on the bed, imagining being forced into such a situation and circled her clit quickly with two gentle fingers until she came hard, her stomach clenching a little unpleasantly. She wiped her hand off on the bedspread and turned off the recording, setting an alarm for nine. She got under the blanket but found that the room had mysteriously become much warmer, so she threw it off the bed and went to sleep under the sheets alone, her mind empty and quiet after her orgasm.

Betelgeuse sat and watched her. It took forever! He was not a patient fuckin’ guy. This was the most boring goddamn way he’d ever tried to get out of the Neitherworld, and he’d spent time with the Maitlands. Life really had a way of kicking you when you were down, and it was kicking him pretty hard. He couldn’t even sleep, for fuck’s sake. The one thing he could do was drink, but he couldn’t get drunk, so there wasn’t nearly as much of a point to it as you might have imagined. He sighed and conjured up a beer bottle, taking a swig from the deep brown stout. 

What was he going to do to her once he got in? A very, very good question. He supposed he should start small, like with the dream he’d witnessed. He’d have to make himself clean and palatable. Unfortunately mirrors are banned in the netherworld due to their ability to act as portals, so he doesn’t really know what he looks like. It’s probably great. Ah, who’s he kidding? He’s been dead for hundreds of years. Dead people don’t really age well. He’ll need to find some way to fix his dream-self up before assaulting Lydia, or she won’t let him do it.

He checks back on Lydia, having drifted away in his thoughts for a bit. She’s not dreaming yet. This is such a pain in the ass.

Three beers later, she’s finally showing signs of being in a dream. She’s twitching a bit and she mumbles something inaudible. Betelgeuse takes a deep breath and, letting it out, slips into her dreamscape. It’s a forest. Which, first of all, weird? Is she having some kind of serial killer dream? Maybe that’s her normal, gothy bitch that she is. He finds a conveniently smooth pool and fixes his appearance as much as he can, getting rid of the smell, the bugs, much of the mold, schooling his face into a nicer expression, taming his hair, and cleaning his jacket up a bit. Then he goes to find his gothy little bitch.

She’s sitting in the middle of a clearing, talking to an ugly snake sitting on a mushroom. Betelgeuse sees her before she sees him and has the foresight to snap quietly and make himself invisible. He creeps around the back of the clearing. When he comes in, she isn’t there. The snake isn’t either. Neither is the mushroom. Actually, is this even the same clearing? It’s a lot smaller and the trees are looking a lot like walls. The ground is getting weirdly carpety... Someone taps him on the shoulder, and he whirls around, lifting Lydia by the neck and slamming her into the wall. In his confusion, he’d let his invisibility slip, and she’d caught him. Fuck, fuck, he’s a dumbass.

Lydia’s struggling for breath, her face getting increasingly red. He rolls with his mistake, leaning in close and hissing, “Ya know ya shouldn’t sneak up on me. It makes Daddy fucking _angry_.” She closes her eyes and grabs his wrist with both of her hands, trying ineffectively to pry him off of her, but he keeps his hand on her until she’s at the verge of seeming to pass out, her hands weakening where they claw at his arm. He turns and tosses her onto the bed behind him, cushioning her fall with a burst of juice so that she floats the last few inches and lands gently. He hops up next to her, really enjoying how she’s gasping for air. He conjures snakes from under the bed, and they come up and wrap around her wrists and ankles, pulling her out into a taut starfish. She finds her breath, and gasps. 

“What the fuck! What the fuck was that??” A snake zips up and darts into her mouth, going deep enough to gag her but then pulling back so it just tickles at the entrance to her throat, threatening to trigger her gag reflex but not quite doing it. It’s filling her mouth and she can’t really speak: biting it is like biting steel, and her tongue’s not strong enough to push it out, simply sliding against its cool scales ineffectively.

Betelgeuse looks down at her in the darkened room. She’s beautiful, her skin pale against the gloom and darkness of her clothing. Clothing? That’s got to go. He snaps his fingers, and he’s suddenly holding a huge knife. He sees her eyes go wide and then shut tight as he raises the knife high and then plunges it down towards her chest. She screams, but only feels a cool breeze on her body, not the staggering pain of being stabbed in her vital organs.

Lydia looks down as best she can, her head mostly pinned in place by the snake, and finds she’s utterly nude. Betelgeuse grins rabidly down at her, and then her eyes are covered by a multitude of snakes, rasping dryly as they curl into her eye sockets.

Everything goes silent then, and the snakes are utterly still. Goosebumps raise all over her body. 

Betelgeuse smiles. He removes his clothes silently with a twitch of his fingers. His cock is hard as a fuckin’ steel rod because (a) duh, this is a dream, and (b) Lydia’s hot as shit covered in snakes. He hovers over her on the bed. What to do first? He’s not going to take her ass yet. Mouth? Pussy?

As tempting as the latter is, he’s going to go for her mouth first. He conjures a blindfold and slips it over the snakes covering her eyes. They slither out of the way obligingly as it tightens, leaving Lydia in complete darkness the entire time. All of the snakes disappear and she scrambles up onto her knees, where she suddenly finds her hands tied behind her back. When she yanks at them, she finds that the hand tie is integrated into some kind of rope harness which pulls semi-painfully on her neck and breasts. Betelgeuse flicks her nipple and she whines and tries to stand up, but she’s stopped by the tie connecting her thigh to her ankle, making her look almost like a frog. 

She feels the bed take his weight in front of her as it dips a little below her knees. He strokes her hair. She remains unmoved. Suddenly, he grabs her nipples and twists, and she opens her mouth in a shriek of pain and indignation, allowing him to slip in a spider gag with a third (?) hand. 

The bed shifts a little as he gets to his feet. Lydia’s beautifully bound before him, her hands clasping and unclasping behind her back. Her tits are tied up with a pentagram-ish rope tie, and her legs are splayed out beneath, her pussy leaving a bit of a wet spot on the bed underneath her. 

He grabs her chin and cranks her mouth open with the ratchet on the side of the gag. Her tongue flicks out plaintively, licking the side of his hand. She’s lucky it’s so clean. He grabs a handful of her hair and guides his straining cock into her mouth, groaning above her. Finally! It’s been an entire week. Sure, it could be better: it’s hard to feel in dreams and he’s not super great at feeling stuff anymore anyways, one of the worst side effects of being dead, but he can feel warm and wet and clenching and tongue. It’s lovely. 

In her dreams, Lydia has a pretty inactive gag reflex. He’s excited to find out whether this is also true in real life, but that thought falls to the back of his mind as he pushes down on her head and forces himself down her throat. It feels so damn good. Oh my god he’s missed this so fucking much. It’s been what? more than ten years since the last time he got laid, and that was only with the cold bitches working at Dante’s Inferno (ironic, he knows). 

He can feel her teeth scraping against him unpleasantly despite the gag holding her mouth open. He knows he’s got a pretty damn big dick, but it’s nice to get that reaffirmed every so often. A little touching ego boost, you know? It’s nice! He wraps his hand loosely around her throat to feel his dick moving inside it and distorting her thin column. It feels insanely good to squeeze himself even more from the outside.

He pulls out, wiping thick saliva across her cheeks with his cock. She says something but it’s distorted by the gag, and he doesn’t want to hear it right now. He wants to get into that fuckin’ pussy. It’s been a whole decade. He deserves it, goddamnit. He conjures up a pair of her used panties and stuffs them into her gaping mouth, sealing it with strips of white tape. She chokes a little, the fabric too much for her mouth. It’s creeping uncomfortably into her throat and it hurts. The fabric is simply too coarse for the delicate tissues back there, as they’ve only ever experienced very well-lubricated objects and crusty panties are unfortunately not well-lubricated. She coughs to try and get it out but it doesn’t work, and this whole business has distracted her enough that she’s honestly surprised when Betelgeuse tips her forward. 

Lydia lands on her face, which is okay because she’s on a mattress, but startling nonetheless. Her throat does not appreciate the scream. Betelgeuse slaps her ass and slips a finger inside of her. She’s very wet, and feels like velvet around him. Maybe butter? It’s very very nice. He’s impatient, so he decides one finger’s enough and just lines up his cock and pushes. The slickness of his precum and her own personal lubrication do a lot to help him enter, but it’s still almost ridiculous how tight and hot and wet she is. He can’t wait to experience this after the marriage. Fuck fuck fuck that’s going to feel so good. Thinking about it makes him groan a bit.

He pulls out slowly. It’s clear that she’s trying as hard as she can to push him out, but he keeps his pace. He shoved himself rudely back in, fighting against her resistance. It feels great. He can’t help himself and starts pounding into her. 

Lydia moans and squirms and gasps. He feels bigger than in previous dreams, and it’s almost like she can feel every vein and curve. She feels so close to orgasm. Damn it, if only he would let her... oh god, oh god.

Betelgeuse feels very close to cumming. He pounds her for a few minutes and then feels himself almost tipping over the edge. He wants to finish in her mouth though, so he stops. He pushes in and stops again. He doesn’t really want to stop, damn it. Then he flexes his dick. Lydia gasps gratifyingly, so he quickly pulls out and flips her over. 

With a wave of his hand, the cloth and tape disappear, and his cock replaces them in her mouth. He’s kneeling over her face just for ease, and it only takes a few thrusts before he shoots off. It starts off down her throat before he comes to himself and pulls back so that it collects in her mouth. She’s forced to swallow it or choke when he pinches her nose shut, lazily jacking himself off to get the last few drops out for her. 

With a snap, her leg ties and gag are gone. She flexes her jaw. It’s sore from being held open for so long. She wants to pop him one for getting off without her getting off, and is just opening her mouth to be indignant and upset when his disgustingly long tongue slurps up her slit and over her clit. She moans instead and clamps her legs around his head to keep him in place. He grabs her knees and forces them open and flat on the bed, which is a stretch, but thankfully Lydia is pretty flexible, since his grip is like iron: utterly unshakable. He’s not even twitching a little, so it’s clear that holding her down like this is child’s play for him. That’s ridiculously hot. Lydia feels herself getting close to an orgasm... and then he stops. 

Betelgeuse didn’t think that Lydia had really been a good girl during this encounter. Sneaking up on him? Not being happy to see him? Or to be blessed with his cock, wherever it might choose to enter her? Sad what the world had come to. 

He can feel her getting close to the edge. So close. So he stops. 

“Lydia, you’ve been a bad girl. Bad girls don’t get to cum,” he growls out to her, his voice deep and raspy. 

“Fuck off. I deserve to have an orgasm after you did. Asshole,” she says, almost playfully. Is this something they did often? She seems to like being a brat, and if there’s one thing Betelgeuse likes, it’s punishing a bratty sub. 

“Seems like ya haven’t learned your lesson,” he says, and cackles as he snaps to tape her mouth shut. There’s nothing she can do about it with her hands tied, and he wants to edge her for a while. She should be sorry then. 

When he’s brought her to the edge five more times, pinching her clit painfully after each almost-peak to make it harder for her to get back to a peak, she’s crying into her blindfold. He can hear her ugly-sobbing through the tape, and he’d be worried about her ability to breathe if this were real life. He rips the tape off the old-fashioned way, just because he feels like it, and snarls out, “What the fuck d’ya want, Lydia? This is what bad girls get. And you’ve definitely been a bad girl.”

“Please, please, daddy,” she cries, her cheeks flushed and her words garbled by tears. “Please let me cum, I’ll be good! I promise! Please! I’ll suck your cock! I’ll let you fuck me in the ass! I’ll do anything! Just please, please, please let me cum!”

Instead of answering, he drops his face back into her pussy. She cries out in joy and tumbles over the edge almost at once, shaking hard as she crashes through a intense orgasm. She gasps and gasps and suddenly Betelgeuse is back behind the mirror. 

Lydia has woken up and is shakily sitting up on her bed. The clock shows that it is one in the morning. Betelgeuse wipes her juices off his face and sucks on each of his fingers. She’s nice and tangy. Fuck, though, he wishes it hadn’t ended so quickly. He didn’t even get her to say his name. He curses under his breath. He’s a dumbass. 

Lydia’s legs were shaking. She hadn’t had a wet dream that intense in a long time -- maybe ever? She can feel that she’s soaked through her panties, and is filled with adrenaline. Her hair has fallen out of one of its carefully constructed braids, so she raises a shaky hand to brush it out of her eyes.

Lydia gets out of bed and slips off her underwear, using it to wipe down her thighs and then leaving it on the floor of her room. She tiptoes downstairs to keep the floorboards silent out of habit. Tea could help this, right?

She filled her teapot with water and set it on the stove. Looking in the tea cupboard, she thumbed through the pots to find a sleepytime tea. Hopefully some was left: she had had a lot of trouble sleeping the past few nights and had been using the tea a lot more than usual. Taking the silvery box down, she found that there was maybe a scoop left. She’d need to get more soon.

Lydia packed a strainer with tea and dropped it into a mug. The teapot was whistling, so she filled the teacup, left the teapot on the stove and went to the living room, settling into the couch to watch crappy late-night television.

As the tea cooled and the ads played, Lydia thought back to the dream. There had been bondage. She’d given and received oral. The details were hazy but she thought it had been a Betelgeuse dream again. It had been good -- but of course it was good. Who had a bad sex dream? She was making the dream and the point of the dream was to have a great time. She clearly had, too. Damn the timing though. She wished that the dream could have come in the morning. Imagine waking up with an orgasm like that!

Eventually Lydia finished the tea and fell asleep on the couch, teacup still in her lap.

Betelgeuse sighed. Luckily he’d gotten off before the whole thing had ended. Goddamn Lydia was sexy. Holy shit. He sat back in a chair he conjured behind the mirror and decided to see if he could juice up a television which could catch Lydia’s cable. He could, and he spent the rest of the night laughing at the absolute bullshit that passed for television nowadays.

Lydia woke up to early morning sunlight streaming through the windows and instantly decided to spend the day in the cemetery. She ran upstairs and dressed quickly, throwing on black cargo pants and a black crop top, tying her hair into a low ponytail which would fit under her helmet. She packed her camera carefully into its protective carrying case and slung it over her shoulder, racing downstairs to her bike. 

She spent four hours in the cemetery, finally starting to feel pains of hunger around one pm. She’d been doing studies of moss and rocks and tombstones, experimenting with light and shadow, and found it was really great to get back into the gothy swing she’d had to suppress a bit for college. Still, it was time to break for lunch and maybe explore another place afterwards. She’d spent far too much time at the cemetery lately and needed a new subject! Hopefully she’d find somewhere inspiring in town while getting lunch. That would really be the dream. 

She biked back into the town and got a slice of hawaiian pizza at the ancient Joe’s Pie’s shop. She wheeled her bike around the side of the building and was deeply happy to find that there was actually an alleyway! It had trash! And was sort of dark and aesthetic! 

Lydia spent an hour or so taking photos and then decided that her muse had disappeared. Whatever. She biked home instead of trying to force it.

It was only three, so Lydia decided to go back and work on cleaning the house more. She’d need to wash the floors and walls, clean furniture, wipe up cobwebs and dust and clean the carpets and fabrics. Thinking about cleaning the kitchen was mind-blowingly exhausting, so she decided to start in the living room. 

Lydia washed the walls and the floor, vacuumed and spot-cleaned the couch, cleaned the windows, took the small carpet outside and beat it to get the dust out, polished the coffee table, and fixed up all of the cords in the television stand. It didn’t take long for the living room to feel completely clean, and after finishing Lydia was fully immersed in a burst of cleaning inspiration and she got through her parents’ old room, the study, and the kitchen (it wasn’t as bad as she’d feared due to the fact that once most of the food was thrown away due to its status as a health hazard, it was just wiping down surfaces and removing kitschy touches). 

The last two rooms to clean would be her bedroom and the bathroom, but it was almost ten and Lydia was trying to fix her sleep habits, goddamnit. She went upstairs and took a quick, hot shower, put on lotion just to feel fancier, threw on a baggy black t-shirt and clean underwear and finally fell into bed. She decided not to get off, hoping that ignoring her conditioned desire to nut herself to sleep would stop her from having any weird dreams. Instead, she put on soothing music and made sure that her bedroom was absolutely dark. She was able to drop off within twenty minutes.

Betelgeuse had been waiting! All day! He knew that he needed to get her to say his fucking name. He didn’t want to get distracted again like last night. He turned off the television and watched her like a hawk, not even moving. The darkness of the room made no difference to him, so he watched her until she finally, finally drifted to sleep, and eventually into another dream.

He instantly juiced himself into her dream, re-doing the changes he made to his appearance to make him palatable to her again. This time the dream was a bookshop, and Lydia was browsing the shelves. The bookshop was full of other patrons, but totally silent. The only one making any noise was Lydia as she pulled down books and paged through them before rejecting them and carefully returning them to their rightful places on the store’s shelves.

Betelgeuse spat disgustingly into his hand, slicking his hair back as he sauntered over to where she was standing, oblivious, next to the bookshelf.

“Hey babes,” he rasped. “What’s cookin’? Is that emo poetry?”

Lydia put the book she was reading carefully back on the shelf. “Oh, hey.. What are you doing here?”

“Nothing much.” He smiled at her, and reached his hand into his pocket. “Want a Zagnut?”

“Sure. I didn’t know that you liked those.”

Betelgeuse intentionally fumbled the candy bar as he handed it to her. It fell under the bookshelf of crappy poetry she’d been thumbing through, skittering away into the dust bunnies which had been breeding for millenia beneath it.

Lydia made an “oops” noise and knelt down, rooting under the bookshelf for the candy bar. With a snap, Betelgeuse teleported behind her at the same time as he handcuffed her wrist to the leg of the bookshelf.

Lydia whipped around to look at him, only to find her other arm tugged backwards by an unseen force and cuffed to the bottom of the bookshelf, so that both her arms were cuffed to the bookshelf behind her back.

“What the shit?” She yanked hard at the cuffs. They might as well have been cast into a concrete block the size of a house for all the good that did. She tried to stand up, but could barely make it up a foot before her hands yanked her rudely back to her knees. The bookshelf must have been incredibly heavy. Insane.

Betelgeuse leaned over her and grinned with far too many unclean teeth. “Looks like you’re a lil’ stuck, huh babes? What are ya gonna do about that one?”

Lydia snarled up at him, “Fuck off. I know you did this, you bastard.”

“Me! Nah, never! That’s an infamous handcuffing bookcase. Ya gotta be careful in stores like these. Half of them are gothy sex trafficking rings. These bookcases capture hundreds a year. You’re lucky that I’m here to save ya.”

“Whatever. Just would you please get me out of this? I’m worried someone will walk by and see this and get the wrong idea or something.”

“Oh, but babes, I don’t do anything without payment. Let’s make a deal. I’ll let you out of the cuffs -- a-a-ah,” he said, tut-tutting and shaking a rebuking finger as Lydia snarled and tried to headbutt him, “Don’t get nasty babes, this is a professional business deal. Where was I? Oh yes -- I’ll let ya out of the cuffs if you do one thing for me.”

“Do what? I refuse to marry you, you gross asshole.”

“Nothing like that! It’s been six hundred years since Daddy got any sugar though... I don’t need ya to be married to me to give me a little relief, if ya know what I mean.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“And you’re gonna do it if ya want out of those cuffs, aren’t ya, babes.” What could have been an endearing nickname became perverted in his mouth. Lydia felt dirtied by it. Somehow it was demeaning in a way it had never been before.

“Just let me out! We’re in a store! There are people here! I re--” Her mouth was conveniently opened by her protests -- convenient for Betelgeuse, that is, as he stuck three fingers into her mouth, dragging her jaw open.

“Aaah! Uh-uh,” she drooled, trying to fight his grip in order to speak. He was inhumanly strong and it was impossible. She could see his other hand as it unbuttoned his pants, slowly pulled down the zipper, and fished out his dick. It was half-hard, as far as she could tell from previous experience, but it still looked far too big for her to fit anywhere, honestly. He kept a finger in her mouth as he fed it to her, crowding her back so that she had only about an inch of room between the back of her head and the side of the bookshelf. “Alright, babes.” He patted her on the head like a dog. “If ya wanna get out, ya know what to do. If ya bite me I’ll juice your clothes off, pop in an o-ring gag and yell that you’re giving out free blowjobs. That would be a lot worse than just helping Daddy out, wouldn’t it?”

Her eyes looked up at his for a moment, trying to gauge whether or not he would do it. She decided that yes: he would, so she started sucking his dick. She didn’t have much room to maneuver, so she used as much suction as possible to try and make up for it, bobbing her head back and forth the little that she could.

He grew until he was pressing uncomfortably at the back of her throat. She gagged and tried to get away, but found her head stopped very uncomfortably by the solid wooden bookshelf behind her. As she was blinking back the water in her eyes, he grabbed ahold of her head and shoved himself down her throat before she had time to react. She couldn’t breathe -- she couldn’t breathe -- she was choking -- she was going to die -- and he pulled out. 

“Come on, babes, I thought ya knew how to do this, huh? The guy behind ya doesn’t look too impressed.”

Lydia screeched around his cock and tried to yank her head away. He had too tight of a hold on it for her to get away but it did graze her teeth over his dick.

“Uh-uh, babes. I felt teeth. Remember what I said about teeth?”

She was almost sobbing. He _almost_ felt bad.

“Alright, alright, I’ll stay with ya.” He smiled angelically down at her as he nudged against the back of her throat. “But your clothes will have to go.”

Before she could say anything, he snapped and they were gone. She tried to hunch or move her legs, but she was pinned in place by his placement of her head, her cuffed arms, and the way her legs were stuck splayed open by the way she was kneeling around his legs where he stood in front of her.

“I’m not a bad guy though, babes!” He made an eyebrow-face as though this was the worst thing in the world he could possibly be called. Suddenly, Lydia felt something buzzing lightly at her clit. “It is connected to your... performance, though.”

She sucked and found that the buzzing increased incrementally. 

“It’s a you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours kinda thing. You know? Daddy’s got ya. I really do care, babes.”

She sucked, bobbed, brought him into her throat. He was like a steel rod. Thankfully he didn’t taste unpleasant. What was unpleasant was when he slammed her head down and held it, thrusting into her throat as though she were just a hole for his use, as he did whenever he felt she wasn’t doing a good enough job. She tried hard to please him but her lack of experience meant that her jaw tired quickly. She wanted nothing more than for him to get off -- the insubstantial vibrator at her clit clearly wasn’t going to do anything really good for her until she got him off -- but it was just so hard! No pun intended.

Betelgeuse knew she wasn’t very experienced. It was extremely clear from the way she had tired so quickly and was unable to consistently fit him into her throat. He sighed. He’d need to do it himself. Every damn time! Nobody could manage to handle anything on their own! We can’t haunt these people! We can’t leave the house! Juno’s not good enough! He was exhausted of never getting his damn reward for all the shit he did for other people.

He grabbed her head one last time and bent over her, stabilizing himself with a palm against the bookshelf as he thrust wildly down her throat, uncaring of her uncontrollable gagging or her need to breathe. He finally, finally came, pulling back into her mouth as she sucked on him to get everything out.

As he finished, he pulled out of her mouth. 

“Swallow it.”

Lydia swallowed, looking up at him through teary eyes. The vibe on her clit wasn’t doing enough to get her off; what was up with that? She’d gotten him off, hadn’t she? Her half of the deal was complete. What more could he possibly want? Jesus christ.

He knelt down and grabbed her chin, staring her right in the eyes.

He was very moldy, but thankfully smelled only of dirt after the rain. Not unpleasant, although certainly not a human smell.

“Lydia, I really had to help ya out there. Ya weren’t pulling your weight at all!”

“I - I -” Lydia stuttered, trying to find the words to describe how unfair he was being.

“I’m gonna need ya to do somethin’ for me if ya wanna get off.” He had felt his power waning as time had passed and he’d been stuck behind the mirror without another incantation. “Just gimme a please.”

Lydia could do that! “Please,” she whispered, throat sore.

“That’s not very polite. Please what?”

“Please, Daddy.”

“Try again.” His grip on her face was becoming uncomfortable, but it was overshadowed by how much the vibe had increased. It was almost, almost, almost blowing her mind. And she knew what he wanted, what would get her off.

“Please... Betelgeuse.”

He sped up the vibe and held her as she came. It looked harsh. She curled over into herself as much as she could, crushing into her center as the contractions hit. She made a noise like she was doing something just -- just immensely satisfying, which he supposed she was. Of course she was! He was a master at this. He stroked her hair and juiced himself out of the dream, yanking down his pants and spitting into his hand. He’d need to get off a couple more times. Fuck, he felt amazing -- the power of his name buzzing through him allowing him to ruffle the pages of a book left on Lydia’s desk. She was so fuckin’ hot -- and that dream-sex they’d shared had been very inspiring, if ya know what I mean. She’d said his name!! This would work! Please, please let this work.

Lydia woke up gasping. What was up with these dreams? They were intense red-tinged sexual fevers. Had she been in a mall? Wow, she was messed up. Thankfully it was only Saturday night, but tomorrow night she’d really need her sleep. Work started pretty late, luckily, but it still started at a specific time. She needed to sleep through the night.

There was still an ancient boxy tv and vcr player in the corner of her bedroom. Lydia got up and selected an old, well-worn box from her bookshelf, slotting the vhs tape into the player. It was a low-budget, gory horror story. Hopefully it would help her fall asleep.

By the time the first of the three friends had been killed doing something classically stupid, Lydia was fast asleep and snoring.

Lydia slept through the night and woke up feeling decently refreshed for once. Apparently not getting off before going to sleep did not prevent weird sexual dreams. Maybe more exercise would help? And a cup of sleepytime tea before bed?

Lydia got up and slung her hair into a crappy bun on the top of her head. Her hair was frizzy -- she hadn’t taken proper care of it for a while. She’d need to do a bit of a spa day at some point. She liked the feeling of being smooth and hydrated and creamy she got after she really put some effort into taking care of her appearance. Was that maybe catering to patriarchal expectations? Maybe. But it felt good and it wasn’t for a man -- it was for self-care.

Lydia slung on an old pair of leggings and went to the supply closet to grab all the supplies she’d need to clean the final two rooms. Lydia did the bathroom first, leaving the windows and doors open when she finished so that it could air out and be all nice and fresh for her me time. Then she lugged the supplies into her room. Frankly, it looked the worst out of all of the rooms. She’d done an extremely cursory cleaning job and hadn’t even changed her bedding -- soon it would be celebrating its fifth birthday. Lydia threw all of the laundry downstairs to join the huge pile she’d created at the foot of the staircase. She cleaned out her dresser and closet, sorting clothes to keep, donate, or throw away. She wiped down the drawers and filled them with some of her clothes, hanging others in the closet. She vacuumed the bottom of the closet and lined her shoes up inside. She worked her way around the tv, the bed, and the nightstands, finally coming to a halt in front of the vanity. It was nice and cold in this corner of the room, and this would be the last thing she had to deep-clean in the entire house. That was a very nice thought.

Betelgeuse glared at Lydia from behind the mirror. He’d been too busy jerking off to enter her dreams again last night. Now he was a little sore and illogically angry at her for having the gall to say his name once (twice) but not three times. His anger made the vanity cold, something he realized as he saw Lydia rub her arms for a second. He pulled in his power, ending what must have seemed like a strangely localized cold snap. He hadn’t realized that he’d gotten powerful enough to influence the living world again, so he hadn’t been keeping as tight of a hold on his juice. It felt better to let it roam free, but if it was going to do shit like that he wouldn’t be able to let it out.

Lydia swept everything off the desk and emptied the drawers. Betelgeuse whistled whenever she bent over and showed him her ass or cleavage. She couldn’t hear him, but it seemed like the proper and respectful response. Lydia proceeded to clean the vanity thoroughly. Her lack of a bra meant lots of fun titty movement when she scrubbed the surface of the desk or cleaned the glass of the mirror. That was especially exciting for Betelgeuse. It was weirdly hot to be so close to her while she was utterly unable to see him. He could definitely see her, and he really appreciated the closeup of her tits when she stretched up to reach the top of the mirror.

Lydia organized her stuff into the drawers, leaving her sketchbook, pens and pencils, film, camera, and keys on top of the vanity. She grabbed all the mugs which had seemingly multiplied around the room, taking them downstairs to wash.

Betelgeuse found that he had just enough power to move her sketchbook. It took a lot of concentration. He wouldn’t have been able to move her camera or anything (too heavy) but a bound pile of paper was doable. He laboriously flipped through it, amazed by her talent but truly delighted by the number of artfully drawn nudes: of Lydia, of other women, of -- was that him? Damn, she had not done him any favors. He supposed it was true-to-life, but isn’t art supposed to be flattering or something? He was pretty good looking for a dead guy, or so he’d been told by Dante’s girls, but she’d really played up the grossness and the gore and downplayed how devilishly handsome he could be.

He heard her footsteps coming up the stairs and tried to adjust the sketchbook back to where it had been. He couldn’t quite manage it, but was able to shut it just as Lydia returned to the room. 

Lydia had started the laundry, washed a lot of dishes, and returned all the cleaning supplies to their locations. It was lunchtime, and she was hungry. It was time to head into town to get lunch and also to do a nice bit of exercise on her bike so she’d hopefully slip into an exhausted sleep instead of a weird horny sleep for once. 

Lydia walked into the room, meaning to turn towards the closet but arrested by the sight of the pages of her sketchbook floating down together. Almost as though it had been languorously shut just before she entered the room. Her windows weren’t even open -- oh, but it had probably been the breeze from the door opening. Never mind that the vanity was all the way across the room and nothing else had moved.

Lydia decided to ignore it and grabbed tennis sneakers from the closet, shoving them on without unlacing them and running downstairs. She grabbed her phone, wallet, keys, and helmet. She locked the door once she got outside, and hopped onto her bike. She was feeling like a salad. There was a family-run sandwich shop with a salad bar which would be perfect for lunch.

Lydia left her bike outside and went in to craft her own elaborate, partly-healthy partly-self-indulgent salad. She paid for it and ate it outside on a bench, making small talk with people who walked by and recognized Lydia from four years ago. She’d thought she’d changed but clearly not that much. 

When she had scarfed down the entire bowl, she tossed her trash and cycled the very, very long way home. It took her an hour and a half to get back, and along the way there were several very steep hills, so Lydia was quite sweaty when she got home. She’d have a couple of hours for self-care and pampering, then she could order takeout and fall asleep to another bad horror movie. That had worked really well last time.

Lydia stripped off her clothes downstairs, tossing them in the baskets of things-to-clean and moving the first load from the washer to the dryer, putting a new load in the washer and starting both appliances. She had a lot of stuff to wash -- three or four loads. She’d need to keep coming down during her spa time. 

Lydia spent hours in the very steamy bathroom. She took a luxurious, salted bath, conditioning her hair, shaving everything, exfoliating, doing a face mask, and pumice stoning her feet. She did her fingernails and toenails, braided her hair into two dutch braids, covered herself in lotion and thoroughly flossed and brushed her teeth. She also found the time to finish all of the laundry. Still naked, Lydia brought the four baskets of clean things up one by one and dumped them on her bed. She sorted and folded everything, returning essential items to their homes and putting everything else away in the drawers and closets where they belonged. She made her bed and flopped down in it, feeling decadent and sexy. She lay there for a minute or so, and then decided what she needed to make the night perfect was a lot of takeout.

She flipped to her nightstand and pulled out the menus she found there. Thai food sounded delicious. She ordered Tom Kha noodle soup -- spicy, with tofu -- and potstickers and spring rolls. She found a robe in her closet and grabbed money from her wallet to pay for the guy when he came. In the meantime, she’d get started on the horror movie.

Honestly, this day just kept getting better. Now she’s cleaning naked? Can you say wife kink? Damn. This girl was great. Betelgeuse sat and appreciated her very nice form, brainstorming ideas for tonight’s dream. 

He wanted a “spacer” dream. One night where he didn’t try to get her to say his name, to try and lull her into a false sense of security. He was a bit worried after he hadn’t been able to close the sketchbook in time, and he definitely didn’t want her to cotton onto anything before he got out. So tonight would just be sex. Then tomorrow he’d make her say it three times, not once, and he’d be home free. No sandworm tamers, no cars, no parents, no help. She’d be wifed and he’d be free.

He thought he would try anal tonight. Test the waters to see if she was into it. Oh, who was he kidding? He’d make her like it. Even if she didn’t, he certainly fuckin’ would.

Lydia had watched half of the movie before the doorbell rang. She trotted downstairs, paid and tipped, and brought everything upstairs to feast on while finishing the movie. It was delicious. She hadn’t had Thai food in far too long, and it was one of her favorite things to eat. The soup was wonderfully spicy, the potstickers were crisp, the rolls were fragile and delicious, and everything was flavorful, well-cooked, and steaming hot. She scarfed everything down and packed the empty boxes back into the plastic bag for morning Lydia to take down.

Lydia set an alarm for eight so that she’d have plenty of time to get ready for her new job. She cuddled down into the covers and was asleep before the movie was over.

Betelgeuse knew exactly what he wanted to do and he couldn’t wait to do it, but he got distracted by the horror movie. It had been a while since he’d watched tv, okay? When he looked up from the movie, Lydia was already asleep. He watched her, his head planted in his hand. He was very, very bored. It took forever before she seemed to be dreaming and he was able to ooze into her dream. Lydia was lying on a beach towel. The towel was placed on a beautiful white sand beach. The beach was bordering a beautiful turquoise ocean. There were palm trees and coconuts and tropical flowers. Betelgeuse was distracted from all of this by Lydia’s outfit. She was topless and wearing a g-string swimsuit bottom. She also had sunglasses on. She was lying on her stomach. She looked warm and squishy and comfortable. Time to change that.

Betelgeuse snapped his fingers and appeared next to Lydia on his own ratty brown towel. He had put himself into striped bathing trunks, and had his own pair of sunglasses. He shook his hand out and brought it up to his mouth with a lit cigarette. He blew the smoke over Lydia’s head. 

Lydia turned, shifting her sunglasses down her nose to glare at him, though she was smiling a little. 

“Hey, you,” she said. She winked.

“Hey, babes,” Betelgeuse replied.

They sat in silence for a little while. Despite himself, Betelgeuse enjoyed how warm and calm it was. Lydia’s mind could create some very nice places. 

After a bit, he got bored. Stubbing his cigarette out in the sand, he juiced up a bottle of sunscreen.

“Hey, uh, babes,” he rasped. “Ya don’t wanna burn. Lemme put sunscreen on ya? You can just lay back and enjoy.”

“Sure.” Lydia sounded sleepy.

Betelgeuse plopped himself down on her butt, massaging the lotion into her back. He wound his way down her back to her butt, making sure to cover her thoroughly. He liked being able to dig his fingers into every inch of her. She was so silky and warm, and it was very, very nice. The closer he got to her butt, the farther back he scooched on her legs. He ended up sitting/crouching right behind her knees. 

He tugged experimentally at the strings tying the bottoms of her suit together. The suit covered nothing, and he felt it wouldn’t make much of a difference if he just pulled it off.

He was right -- it didn’t. Lydia was too comfortable to care much, especially with the way he was massaging her lower back. He moved down to straight up massaging her butt. He gave it a few light smacks, before grabbing her hips and hoisting her up so that she was bent at the knees and her back was arched nicely. It presented her very well. He leaned forward and found that he was able to eat her out very nicely.

Lydia moaned and tried to ride his face. It was tough. He was very good at eating her out, and, unfortunately, equally good at foiling her attempts to cum. When she started getting close he’d switch tactics, forcing her to start again from the beginning, but quite frankly, Lydia felt too cozy to care much. She cared a bit more when he moved to her asshole.

Despite the many and varied kinks she’d explored on the internet and in some raunchy dreams, Lydia had never thought about anal. It seemed gross, and painful. Stood to reason he’d like it. That didn’t mean she had to like it, though. She tried to bring her hands back to slap him away, or slide back down to provide some protection from his inhumanly long, questing tongue, but found that she was draped over something which kept her presented for his tongue, and that her hands were handcuffed to chains which disappeared directly into the sand. They didn’t move. Presumably they were anchored miles below or something, and she would never get out. “I don’t think I’m going to like this!” Lydia squeaked, trying to twist away from the strange sensations at her back door.

“The way you’re drippin’ for me tells me ya will,” Betelgeuse grinned. “I know what I’m doing.”

Lydia was about to continue to argue, but her opened mouth let out a gasp instead as a very well-lubed finger slipped into her ass. 

“Ya gotta relax, babe,” Betelgeuse said, cheerily. “Trust me, chicks love this!” His voice turned darker, getting deeper. “I know I fuckin’ adore it. And I’m gonna get it. Relaxed or not, my cock is going up your ass in a few minutes.”

Lydia decided to try and relax, prompting the entry of a second finger. Jesus, he had big hands. His fingers were thick, and they stretched her pretty significantly. He scissored, working in and out to try and loosen her up. Lydia counted her breaths and stared at the sand in front of her. She couldn’t deny that this was pretty hot. She kind of enjoyed the feeling too. It was definitely unique.

After a minute, he added one more finger, working her open enough to stick some sort of squeeze bottle of lube in between the fingers of the hand working her open and inject a whole lot of lube straight into her ass. Lydia felt very wet and squelchy in both the pussy and the ass area. It was an interesting mood.

Betelgeuse used his hand to slick up his cock, spreading precum and lube up and down his length. He bellied up to Lydia, lining up for the plunge. He pushed.

Lydia had tensed up the moment she’d felt something much bigger than even three fingers press lightly against her asshole. She couldn’t do this! She wanted to panic, but found that she’d been ball gagged and her feet were now chained as well. She couldn’t move, and she couldn’t speak. She could only shake as he pushed slowly into her. It was painful despite the prep, and she quickly felt incredibly full.

Once Betelgeuse got the first inch in, he paused. Although it seemed like Lydia was into this, that wasn’t enough. He wanted to make sure that this was, net-net, a positive experience. He leaned forwards a bit, taking care not to push in any more, and slipped a hand down between her legs to strum at her clit, the invisible block holding her ass up letting him through without dropping her to the towel.

He rubbed until he felt her relax a bit, then he began to slowly ease himself in and out of her ass in very, very tiny increments, slowly, slowly getting deeper and deeper. He was a patient guy. He had all the time in the world to do this.

To Lydia, it seemed like forever before he moved again. The pain had turned into more of a burning, strange stretch, and she was horny. The slow, intense, deliberate motions he made were very effective. It took a long, long time, but he was finally fully seated inside of her ass. All of him. She felt like he was displacing her lungs -- she couldn’t draw a full breath. The way her legs were weak with arousal made this seem like a secondary concern. Air was not a priority, not when you had a dead guy up your ass and an orgasm to earn.

Betelgeuse finally began to really move. He slowly worked up to a long, gentle thrust. He wouldn’t be able to last long like this. It had taken a very long time to get into Lydia’s beautiful peachy ass in the first place, and it had felt _great_. He didn’t want to delay his orgasm any more, so he set his fingers to vibrating and concentrated on getting Lydia off. It only took a couple of minutes before she soaked his hand and contracted hard around his cock, moaning through the gag. It was too much and he followed her over the edge, pulsing hot ropes of cum into her ass. It felt great -- and then he was back behind the mirror. Really, it seemed like a little bitty full-body orgasm would be enough to wake her up every time.

Lydia shook awake. Her ass didn’t feel like it had just been plowed, but the notion that the dream had been about anal -- something she hadn’t thought about before, raised alarm bells. Lydia flipped to her nightstand, grabbing her phone and writing a note to go by the library and look for books on dream interpretation. She was kind of exhausted and still very full, so she was able to turn over and fall back asleep.

Betelgeuse, on the other hand, was still horny as all get out. He thought long and hard, if you know what I mean, about the things he would do to Lydia to get her to say his name, and was well occupied for the remainder of the night.

Lydia woke up twenty minutes before her alarm was set to go off. The sunlight streaming in through her window was very pretty, and she enjoyed the warm and lax feeling she had gained from her first long stretch of sleep in a while. Looking at her phone reminded her that she should go to the library. After sleeping, she didn’t feel quite so worried, but she thought she might as well do it anyway. It should be decently interesting to read up on dreams, even if she wasn’t able to understand why she would be dreaming about stuff she wasn’t into and didn’t think about.

With that in mind, Lydia dressed, applied makeup, brushed out her hair, and went downstairs to make some toast for breakfast. She wanted to bike to the library before work, since it opened at nine (before her shift) but closed at five (during her shift). 

Lydia arrived at the library at nine precisely. She was a little flushed, but thankfully it was a cool day, so she wasn’t as sweaty as she might have been. She went inside and looked up “dream interpretation” on the library’s computer. It sent her to the 150s, so she went and combed through the bookshelves. When she found what she was looking for, she read a quick bit from each of the book candidates, then gave up and simply borrowed them all, stuffing them into her backpack and racing to work.

Work was surprisingly nice. Although Agnes and Martha were retired, the shop had retained the comforting aura they’d worked so hard to create. Lydia vowed to keep that aura alive for as long as she possibly could. As a high schooler, she’d loved this tea shop. It would be rude of her to give nothing but her very best to it now that she was the one caring for it.

Michael showed her how to clean, make the tea, work the fancy and confusing coffee machine (it seemed like most of the buttons were ornamental), bake cookies and pastries (showing her around the kitchen and giving her the carefully-guarded recipes), work the till, tidy the shop -- anything and everything Lydia needed to know. Lydia wrote everything down in a notebook. She wanted to keep everything perfectly in order and earn her money honestly. It seemed like a fun job, and every customer Lydia served seemed nice.

Her day was over quickly, and she hurried home. She’d eaten savoury pastries in the back during her lunch break, but that had been five hours ago. It was definitely time for dinner. She was absolutely starving. 

Lydia knew that at some point she’d need to stop living off of takeout. It was needlessly expensive, and she could cook for herself. She had both the time and (somewhere) the inclination to do so, but she’d need to go shopping. At some point. Tonight, she decided to treat herself because first day of work! Definitely not an excuse. Lydia ordered an entire lasagna from the local Italian place. Comfort food. Perfect. It came with breadsticks and salad to pretend that some degree of health was being achieved through your choice of dinner.

Lydia showered, conditioning her hair and coiling it up on her shoulder. She came downstairs just in time for the delivery guy, tipping him and taking the food. It smelled delicious! She brought it to the living room coffee table and set it down, grabbing her backpack and setting it on the couch next to her.

The books in the backpack called to her. Winter River was a small town, with a small library, with a small section on dreaming. Evidently the quiet residents of the town were not overly concerned about the true meaning of their dreams, especially judging by the amount of dust on the books. There were only three of them.

Lydia pored over the books. Sex dreams? Enemies? Past trauma? Ghosts? Nothing seemed to match what was happening to her. As she skimmed through the books, she finished a chunk of the lasagna as well as all of the salad and most of the breadsticks. Slamming the books down on the table next to the leftovers from her meal, she wrapped everything up and stuck it in the previously-empty fridge. 

Was it just her being mentally unstable or something? Why was she having such intense dreams? This didn’t seem very normal, to be honest -- but what could she do about it? It was her mind. 

Lydia pulled out her phone and googled “ways to sleep without dreaming”. A bunch of stuff came up: melatonin, warm milk, sleepytime tea (check), a dark room, tracking your sleep cycle, yoga, acupuncture, lowering your caffeine intake. To be honest, none of it really seemed like it wouldn’t make you dream. It just seemed like it would help you sleep. Lydia searched “how to stop bad dreams”. After delving deeply into the endless scroll of results, she found an article about lucid dreaming. It seemed that by thinking of a trigger before you went to sleep, you could “wake up” in your dream and control it. It sounded perfect! She could stop the magic and make the dream normal -- no sex, just chilling. She would be able to sleep straight through the night again.

Lydia showered, brushed her teeth, and went to bed. As she waited to fall asleep, she thought about how she could realize that she was in a dream: push a finger through her hand, look at a book or a clock, examine her hands closely (they would be distorted in a dream). Repeating this to herself, Lydia drifted off to sleep.

Betelgeuse had been waiting for her to dream again. Once he saw her eyes darting around under her eyelids, he slipped quietly into her dream. Weird. She was sitting in her bedroom, playing with a black cat on her bed.

“Percy! Good kitty-kitty. So smart,” Lydia chirruped at the cat. She was gently stroking the cat’s head and neck, and it was purring loudly. It squinched itself closer to Lydia. Ingratiating little whore. Betelgeuse realized how insane it was that he was calling a cat a whore, but he rolled with it. Cats are the devil’s ears, or something, probably. Everyone hates cats. A good dog, though, that’s another story. Dogs are useful. Dogs are loyal. Dogs keep you warm in the dead of night. Cats? Selfish little bastards. 

With this in mind, Betelgeuse vanished the cat with a flick of his wrist, adjusting his suit jacket and shaking off imaginary dust.

“Hey, baby,” he purred at Lydia. “What’s cookin’?”

Lydia looked up at him and shrugged. “Where’d Percy go?”

“Don’t worry about that. It doesn’t even matter.”

“Yes it does!” Lydia said. She seemed, strangely, close to tears. She had suddenly become flushed and damp. What a quick transition. Impressive, Betelgeuse thought. Impressively crazy.

“What do you need another pussy for, baby?” he asked. “Unless, of course, you want another cock in ya. I can help you with that, no problem. All ya had to do was ask.”

Before Lydia could say anything, she felt someone grab onto her tits. They groaned obnoxiously and squeezed them, making honking noises. She whipped around, cat forgotten, and tried to slap -- was that Betelgeuse behind her? Her hand caught mid-slap, anger forgotten, she whirled back to see Betelgeuse behind her. And in front of her. Two Betelgeuses?

“C’mon, babes, what did ya expect? I don’t like to share.” This came from a third Betelgeuse leaning against her door. He was looking down at his nails like this was the most boring, unimpressive thing in the world.

Lydia looked at him. At the clock by her door. And she remembered. What time had the clock said? She looked at it closely. A quarter after eight. 

The Betelgeuse still holding her hand in a vice grip grabbed her chin with his free hand and forced her eyes towards his. “None of that, babes. Don’t ya wanna have a piece of the lovely surprise I juiced up for ya?”

“Sure, honey,” Lydia purred. She pulled away from him and looked down coyly, fiddling seductively with the strap of her tank top, pulling it down one arm. She backed towards the bed, sneaking a glance at the other Betelgeuses. They were all standing and watching her, apparently happy to let her lead. She quickly glanced at the clock. It read 6:50. What the fuck? Oh, shit. Lydia remembered. It meant that this was a dream. 

Betelgeuse could see something in Lydia’s expression change. You can’t be around as long as he had and not know a bit about lucid dreaming and stuff like that. Shit, shit, shit. But she didn’t know that he had been invading her dreams. He could keep it like that. He watched as she slowly brought her hands up before her, poking her index finger semi-gruesomely through her palm. 

“Hey, babes. That’s a little weird. What about all the hot sex we were about to have?” He tried to sound confused and not at all like he was a separate person with real thoughts currently invading her head.

“Not tonight,” Lydia said. “I haven’t been able to sleep well because of you. Get out of here.”

Betelgeuse couldn’t let this opportunity go. “C’mon babes. I won’t let ya cum, I swear. You only wake up when ya cum. We’ll just leave ya frustrated, yeah? It’ll feel real good though, I swear. Let the B-man make it up to ya. I’m sorry for all those sleepless nights.”

Lydia was staring the man who’d haunted her dreams for years in the eye. She could finally get over this weird sex thing. She had control, he didn’t. Why not have a good time?

“Alright,” she said. “Whatever. But I’m gonna be on top tonight.”

“Sure, babes,” he sleazed, all three of him inching closer to her. “Where do ya want us?”

Lydia looked at the three lecherous demons staring her down. “I think I’ll start with you,” she said, pointing to one at random. “You can eat me out. I don’t care what the two of you do for now, but I’ll need you in a bit.”

Betelgeuse grinned and moved towards her. Eating pussy was something he enjoyed, if the woman had some level of hygienic standards. You couldn’t be too picky down below, after all. He knelt between her legs, slid his hands up her thighs, and licked his lips.

“Permission to take off your shorts, mistress?” His eyes were dark.

It was clear he was not being submissive at all. Lydia would have to change that. Like it or not, she really was the mistress, and he was just a way for her to work out her issues. “Get onto the bed,” she said, pushing him backwards with her foot. He staggered back, pretending she had hurt him somehow, which was bullshit. She turned towards the Betelgeuse who hadn’t gone over to the window to smoke. “Can you juice him to the bed somehow?”

“Sure, babes,” the second grinned. He snapped his fingers and a force shoved the other Betelgeuse up the bed, ropes snapping from behind the headboard to knot around his wrists. As he struggled against them, more snaked up from the foot of the bed to wrap around his ankles and stretch him taught. 

Lydia didn’t bother to thank the traitorous Betelgeuse. He was, after all, a figment of her imagination. It didn’t matter what he thought of her -- after all, he was her! She was calling the shots. Perfectly in control for once in her goddamn life. Lydia stripped off her shorts and underwear, leaving her in her sneakers and socks. It seemed that dream-her was keeping up with the waxing far better than real-her. She’d need to do that soon. Her legs were smooth and white, and her pussy was an inviting peachy pink. She straddled tied Betelgeuse. His long, striped tongue flicked out to moisten his lips. Just going by how crazy his tongue was, this was probably going to feel great. She inched up his chest and grabbed onto the dry, scruffy hair at his crown, yanking his head back. He looked impassively at her down his nose.

“If you don’t do a good job, you won’t be getting in any of my holes tonight.”

He smirked. “Well, I guess I’ll need to do a good job then, yeah?”

Lydia gave his hair one last yank for his impertinence, then held him in place as she straddled his face. She wasn’t really aroused by this, but if he was as good as he said he was, it wouldn’t matter.

And god, was he good. His tongue was surprisingly warm, and very slick. He could somehow rub her g-spot while simultaneously licking gently and quickly at the right side of her clit just the way she liked it. It felt amazingly good. He broke off now and again to tease around her labia, focus on her clit, suck on her thighs, or wriggle as deep inside of her as he could possibly go as though she were a juicy bone he really, really wanted to suck the marrow out of. Lydia bet that if he’d had the use of his hands he could’ve gotten her off within five minutes. He was certainly better than any mortal guy she’d ever slept with. Then again, this was a dream.

She had to pull herself off of him, falling backwards onto his chest and only just catching herself with her hands. He looked her right in the eyes, holding her captivated as he licked the wetness -- her wetness -- off of his face. His tongue really was amazingly long. Good lord. Lydia couldn’t tell whether she found it disgusting or enthralling.

“Lyds, baby, help a guy out?” he rasped. She suddenly realized what she had fallen on -- how could she have missed it in the first place? It was so hard -- and so big. She leapt off of him and looked down at the tent straining his striped pants.

The other Betelgeuse was also watching her, she realized, and he looked equally hungry -- and equally hard. Even the Betelgeuse at the window was affected, although he wasn’t nearly as close, nor did he seem as aggressive as the other two. Lydia smirked.

“This is about me, right, guys?” she cooed. “But I’ll definitely let you eat my ass,” pointing at the Betelguese standing by the bed, “while the guy you tied down fucks me. He’s certainly worked for it.”

Betelgeuse felt anger flicker across his face, although he tried to keep it hidden. He didn’t mind eating ass, but he was hoping for a little more.

Well, who said he couldn’t get a little more. He grinned.

“Sure, babes!” he piped. “Lemme help ya get your shirt off.” He yanked it off over her head, quickly unclipped her bra, and yanked the offending garment off her as well. She was totally nude, and seemed somewhat stunned.

He pointed at his clone tied to the bed, and suddenly both of them were naked. He grabbed Lydia before she could protest and sat her on top of his clone. He stood back and looked at her expectantly. “Go on, babes.”

Lydia felt a bit stunned. Was this supposed to happen? Had she wanted this to happen? What had she said that had made it happen? She couldn’t hold on to the thought, but regardless, it was time to focus on the task at hand. Betelgeuse was hard and weeping for her, and that was pretty hot. She lowered herself onto his cock, stopping halfway. Despite the prep, she couldn’t just slam down on him. She found herself bobbing up and down slowly to work him in. The tongue that breached her asshole weirdly easily came as a bit of a surprise, and Lydia dropped down on his cock with a squawk. It didn’t hurt, but the tongue snaking ever deeper into her ass did, a little.

“Betelgeuse! Stop it!” She cried, twisting to slap at his head. 

Betelgeuse felt his energy bristle when she said his name. Oh, it felt good. But it also felt like this had gone on for too fuckin’ long. He’d tried to play along, but she was just too damn picky. Fuckin’ women. He was gonna get his rocks off. Hopefully she’d believe it was just her twisted imagination -- first-time lucid dreamers were usually pretty shitty and also sceptical as hell, perfect for his needs. His third self juiced over and grabbed her head from behind, sticking two fingers from each hand in her mouth and holding it open, gagging her with them when she tried to speak. The one who’d been tied down sat up, clearly no longer tied at all, and thrust into her hard before pulling out, scooting over next to her to grab her tits and maul them harshly.

The Betelguese with his tongue up her ass pulled it out, spitting grossly on her asshole as the other two dragged her onto her hands and knees on the bed. The one holding her mouth juiced her into a spider gag, shedding his clothes at the same time, and hopping up onto the bed to slide his very, very hard dick into her mouth. The other Betelgeuse sat to the side, pulling on a nipple and stroking his dick languorously with his other hand. 

The one behind her slid a finger into her ass just as the one in front of her hit her gag reflex, causing her to choke and allow the, oh god, it was two fingers, into her ass. She wriggled and thought as hard as she could about the three Betelgeuse’s disappearing. Fucking hell! She could never one-up this asshole, not even in her own head. She wondered vaguely what this said about her.

She felt him draw the fingers out after scissoring her perfunctorily, seeming only to care about getting her loosened up enough to -- fuck, fuck fuck he was in her ass. Ow, god. It didn’t hurt too badly, but it didn’t feel great. He didn’t pause to let her adjust, instead immediately starting to sink in and out of her ass. Thankfully he was doing it in small increments, but it was much faster than the last time. 

The way he was shoving his dick down her throat wasn’t helping. Lydia kept choking, which would tighten her abs and her asshole, making the steady intrusion at her back even more painful. The Betelgeuse pulling at her nipple seemed to suddenly decide he was bored -- and pop, he was underneath her, out of the way of the other two but perfectly positioned to slide into her extra-tight pussy. She could tell that a lot of dick was being stuffed into her. It felt incredibly intense. Very, very tight.

All of the Betelgeuses seemed ridiculously happy. They were groaning, praising her, stroking her skin, cursing, calling her weirdly affectionate things. It made her relax, unbidden, allowing them all to slide deeper into her. She felt overwhelmed by them. They were all around her and all inside of her. It was such a weird experience.

Lydia realized that her body was desperately crying to cum. She’d been on the edge when he’d eaten her out, and that hadn’t fully gone away -- she had retained that high level of arousal through his unexpected turn on her. Now that he was doing something she was really into, she really, really, really, oh-so-very-much wanted to cum. She was dying for it. She tried to touch her clit but he smacked her hand away.

“Don’t cum, babes! Be strong! We made a deal!” he said, sounding half-mocking and half-utterly-sincere.

Lydia almost cried. She needed it so badly.

Then they started fucking her in earnest. She felt miniscule, surrounded and filled by these three men.

Lydia could have died then and there, she was so aroused. It felt almost like she’d fall over the edge -- but no way. She’d never cum without clitoral stimulation before. 

The Betelgeuses were panting. She looked up at the one fucking her face and blinked, trying to focus. He looked intense -- intent. So focused on her. He saw her looking down at him and reached to stroke her face, twining his fingers through her hair and trailing them along her jaw, before he grinned horribly and grabbed her throat, squeezing his dick through the soft flesh stretched around it.

Lydia came hard. She could barely move, skewered as she was by the three of them. The Betelgeuse in front of her looked shocked, and then his eyes flashed murderously under his furrowed brows. He tried to thrust harder into her throat. There was no way he could get off before --

Fuck, fuck, fuck. They were back behind the mirror. Betelgeuse waved his hand and they coalesced into one once more. For a second, he felt three times as horny. His dick throbbed where it was straining at his grimy striped pants. He yanked down his zipper and fished out his dick, watching as Lydia got up from the bed and changed. He was a simple ghoul at heart. Tits? he’d cum. No problem. He appreciated the female body.

Betelgeuse came, painting long stripes on the mirror. He juiced them away and tucked his dick back into his pants. That hadn’t been very satisfying but then nothing much was. Sensations were dulled in the dream-world and being dead robbed you of most of that anyway.

He peered through the glass and saw Lydia on her bed on her phone. He couldn’t see what she was doing, but she seemed peeved. She would type a long sentence and then scroll rapidly. Eventually she gave up, throwing her phone down on the mattress and huffing off downstairs to do who-knows-what.

Lydia was pissed. Why hadn’t she been able to control Betelgeuse in her dream? Wasn’t that the whole point of lucid dreaming? Where the fuck did he get off on forcing her to do stuff? She couldn’t admit that she’d liked it much much more than the dominatrix act she’d tried to pull before it, but he’d forced her into something she hadn’t wanted to do, as far as she could tell. Was it something manifesting from her subconscious mind?

Lydia searched as many terms as she could think of -- failed lucid dreaming, lucid dreaming submissive sex, unable to control lucid dreaming. Nothing seemed to apply to her. She gave up in disgust after ten minutes of scrolling through vague and unhelpful articles, throwing her phone down on the tangled blankets covering her mattress. She stomped off downstairs. It was time to get some tea and think.

Lydia brewed a steaming cup of english breakfast and added almond milk from the fridge. Blowing on it, she stepped outside. Despite the fact that it was August, the night was chilly and damp. Lydia could hear insects and the occasional owl cut through the sound of the wind whistling through the trees and by the house. She wrapped her arms around herself and sat down on the top step of the stairs up to the tiny porch. She sipped her tea, which was way too hot and burned her tongue.

The moon was pretty bright, so Lydia could see decently well, despite the late hour. She tried to empty her mind but couldn’t keep herself from pondering the dream she’d had. She could still feel the wetness seeping though her underwear and staining her thighs.

Either she couldn’t lucid dream correctly and some kinky side of her brain was calling the shots -- or what?

Lydia didn’t want to consider it, but she thought there might be someone messing with her. Her room had felt strangely cool for a second-floor room with no ac in the middle of August. Her sketchbook had moved that one time. She’d had a ton of weird sex dreams about Betelgeuse and she couldn’t stop them. Yes, she’d had dreams about him before, but never this frequently. Maybe it was because she was back in the house where it had happened? But she didn’t feel anxious about it, and before she’d left for college she hadn’t had any weird dreams.

If someone was fucking with her, who could it be? It couldn’t be a regular ghost, or she’d be able to see them. And as far as Lydia knew, nobody had died in the house in the four years she’d been gone, though she supposed it might somehow be possible. It would need to be some other kind of spirit.

Unfortunately, the handbook hadn’t covered much of that, as far as she could remember. The only experience she’d had with non-ghost entities had been with Betelgeuse, and she wasn’t really sure how to classify him. Maybe he was just a super-powerful ghost. He had, after all, said that he was the “ghost with the most”, no matter that it had seemed like a bad line he’d thought up and saved to try and impress someone with, regardless of its veracity.

It could be Betelgeuse, she supposed. If it was, why was he just having weird dream-sex with her and not, say, marrying her? Or trying to get her to say his name?

That had been a staple of the dreams she’d had about him prior to this week. He’d always wanted her to say his name. Now it didn’t seem like he cared. Could this be some jerk impersonating him and getting his jollies off from having kinky sex with her in her head?

It seemed a bit far-fetched.

Lydia thought she would just try some sort of sleep aid the next night. Maybe melatonin? Many of her friends in college had sworn by it. They said that it really helped fix their sleeping schedules, especially after countless hours studying indoors without any sunlight.

Lydia finished her tea and went back inside. She was shivering a little bit. The chill had penetrated her down to the bone, it seemed, and the kitchen felt unreasonably cold as she dumped her mug into the sink. She went upstairs and bundled herself up in her cold comforter. As she warmed up and stopped shivering, she drifted off to sleep, not waking up until her alarm clock rang at eight to get her up for work.

Betelgeuse spent the rest of the night lying on his back and planning what he hoped would be the final night of this half-felt half-assed dream sex. She’d say his fucking name three times before she came, or so help him he’d kill her himself. Well, he wouldn’t, because he wouldn’t be able to get out to kill her, but it was the thought that counted. And the plan? it took a lot of thinking. He wanted something that would really strip her down to a place where she wouldn’t really recognize the importance of what he’d make her say... or at least, she wouldn’t care.

Lydia had a lovely day at work. Because it was summer, people really only came in for iced tea, lemonade, and cookies, so she didn’t spend all of her time slaving over cups of hot coffee like she had in college. She tried all of the cookies the shop sold and helped train two new part-time employees, Jada and Kevin. She drank a lot of water to stay hydrated (drink water everyone!!) and overall had a lot of fun. Lydia was good at her job, and she tried hard, and people usually liked her for it, unless they didn’t want to try hard and thus resented her for removing their ability to slack off as much as they would like. Lydia figured that if she was getting paid, she should do the best job possible in return (as long as people cared and she was getting paid a reasonable amount).

On the way home, Lydia stopped by the drugstore and picked up a bottle of melatonin. When she rang it up, the cashier smiled sympathetically at her.

“These are selling like hotcakes lately. New trend, I guess. And maybe in the summer people sleep less well? Is it the heat? I dunno.”

Lydia smiled at the woman and nodded. “Yeah, the heat really is something.”

“Hope it works for you!” The cashier waved as Lydia left, the melatonin stowed securely in her backpack.

When Lydia got home, it was seven. The drugstore was annoyingly out of the way for one person on a bicycle. She was sweaty and tired, so she took a quick cool shower and made pasta for dinner, eating it with parmesan cheese and butter a la picky toddler.

At eight, she took the melatonin, knowing that she hoped to sleep at ten to get ten hours of sleep before she woke up at eight. She watched an old horror movie in the living room, and when it was done, she felt pretty tired. She got up and prepared for bed, setting her alarm and tucking herself in. She dropped off quickly.

Betelgeuse was ready. He was so ready. Lydia came upstairs and, after a long time in the bathroom, went right to sleep. Perfect. He waited. He watched. Finally, she was dreaming, and he pounced, slipping right into her mind.

Lydia was dreaming about school. Perfect. She was sitting in a classroom containing a dozen college students, and an old professor had just told them that there would be a pop quiz on the entirety of Hamlet. Lydia squeaked in protest. 

“We haven’t even read Hamlet! This is Sci-Fi 101!”

The professor glared at her. “Anyone who knows anything has read Hamlet.” The students around her scoffed and giggled, nodding to each other. “If you fail this quiz, you can leave my classroom. You are clearly not the right person for this school.”

“But--”

“No buts, young lady. This is college. Deal with your own problems.” The professor sneered at her and turned back to his desk, shuffling the papers on it and coughing gently. Betelgeuse burst through the door.

“Professor!” He said, trying to remember how to be out-of-breath. “Your wife! She’s in labor! You need to get to the hospital!”

“Oh my god!” The professor screeched, seeming to grow younger instantly as Lydia’s mind adjusted to this new input. “I have to go! Class, listen to this man while I’m gone! I’ll see you later!” 

Betelgeuse laughed as the professor dashed out the door, dropping his papers in the process. They filled the room in a cloud of white. When it cleared, the classroom was a more traditional high school one. The students were wearing catholic schoolgirl uniforms -- the slutty kind -- and pigtails. Lydia was staring listlessly out of the large window at the side of the room.

Betelgeuse rapped on the desk with a handy ruler. “Lydia Deetz!” He called. Lydia started and stared up at the front of the classroom. She looked spooked by his non-matronly appearance, and opened her mouth to say something. 

“No, Lydia, don’t talk,” he said. “Meet me in my office after class. We need to discuss your inability to stay focused.”

As luck would have it, the bell rang. Lydia gathered her things and followed him to his office. She looked a treat. The outfit he’d put her in was certainly not one any real schoolgirl had ever worn. It involved a thin white shirt, no underwear whatsoever, and a ridiculously short tartan tennis skirt. She was also wearing little white tennis shoes, white bows on her pigtails, and a contrite expression.

“Sir, I’m so sorry. I can’t explain this behavior -- I just haven’t been able to focus as of late.”

Betelgeuse scowled at her and ushered her into his office, locking the door behind them. She sat in the uncomfortable wooden chair in front of his desk. He, on the other hand, was reclining in an imposing leather armchair. He steepled his fingers in front of him, his elbows resting on the smooth armrests of his chair.

“Young lady,” he growled. “If you can’t concentrate in class, you don’t deserve to be a student here. How can you uphold the high standards of this school if you can’t even bring yourself to be present in the lectures we give? We are working here to bring enlightenment and wisdom to the next generation, but we need the barest minimum of effort from that generation in order to give them the gifts we offer. You have to at least reach out your arm to take the torch.”

Lydia sniffled a little. It seemed he was really getting to her. The way her nipples pressed against her taut white shirt was really getting to him. He watched her breasts jiggle as she lifted a hand to scrub away a tear.

“Sir, I just don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry for disappointing you. I’ll try much harder in the future.”

Betelgeuse laughed. It was not a kind laugh, or a forgiving laugh, or a laugh that in any way said that Lydia was done with him.

“What, sir?” Lydia asked, raising reddened eyes to meet his.

“You know, I don’t think you’re truly sorry about this. In my day, if we had to learn a lesson, it was beaten into us. Nowadays, that’s unacceptable. But I think that you still need to learn something. But how can we do that?” He paused, putting a finger to his mouth in a caricature of consideration. “I think that you need to see what you become if you don’t think. If you don’t bother to apply yourself in school. If you have an empty little brain. What do you become? An animal.”

Lydia looked at him with confusion. “What do you mean, sir?” Her tears were forgotten in her confusion. 

Betelgeuse reached into his desk and pulled out a collar.

Lydia looked horrified. “That’s not appropriate!” She blurted, lifting a hand to cover her neck instinctively. All of a sudden her professor -- Betelgeuse -- had way too many teeth.

“Little girl, you should have paid attention. This isn’t about me. It’s about you. You are not leaving this room until you do this, so you might as well accept it.”

Thankfully dreamers adapt well to absurdity. Lydia sniffed and nodded and stood up to pick up the collar. Betelgeuse snatched it away. “Ah-ah-ah. Animals don’t have hands. And animals don’t wear clothes either. Strip.”

Lydia bent down to untie her shoes with trembling fingers. She put her socks neatly inside of them and set them under the iron coat rack which was placed next to the heavy oak door. She looked at it longingly, then sadly and self-consciously slipped out of her button down and skirt, folding them and putting them on top of her shoes. She tried her very best to cover all of the important bits, and crept back across the room to sit in the chair. Just as she reached the chair, Betelgeuse moved. It was somehow audible, and it caused her to freeze and look up at him.

“Animals don’t sit in chairs. They sit on the ground.” He paused for a long moment while Lydia gazed at him through watery eyes. “Come here first. We need to make sure you’re a real animal in every possible way.”

Lydia walked over to him, one arm across her breasts and one covering her mound. The first thing he did was yank her arms to her sides, holding her wrists tightly. He glared at her. “Animals have no modesty, Lydia.” He let go of her arms, and she stubbornly kept them in place despite her great desire to move them back to where they had protected her innocence. This was a man -- her teacher! This was so wrong, but Lydia didn’t say anything.

Betelgeuse disguised his conjuring with the opening of a drawer. He reached into it and pulled out a pair of pink leather bags -- or so it seemed. He opened one and slid it over her hand, and she understood it immediately. The leather kept her hand in a fist -- she couldn’t use her fingers to get it off since it buckled tightly around her wrist. The underside of the bag had a sweet white paw design.

He clipped white cat ears into her hair. They twitched on their own, demonstrating cat-sadness by flattening against the sides of Lydia’s head. 

He grabbed eyeliner out of the drawer. “Kneel.” Lydia knelt. He tilted her head up with a few fingers under her chin. He kept her still as he colored the underside of her nose and drew whiskers on her cheeks. She looked adorable. He smiled at her. This was a nice smile, if a little smug. We can’t have it all though. 

He buckled the collar around her neck. It was pink leather, and surprisingly heavy. There were four D-rings on it, evenly spaced around its circumference.

“Turn around,” Betelgeuse said. He still sounded pissed off. Lydia turned around. She let out a sharp gasp when he gave her a hard shove forward right in the middle of her upper back. She hadn’t been expecting it, and only just caught herself with her paws. He was still pushing her down, though, so she let him shove her down until her ass was high in the air, her legs spread as if to show off, and her face smushed sideways against the wood flooring of the old office. It smelled a little musty and a little like lemon furniture polish. She could hear him uncap something behind her and wondered what he could possibly be doing.

Betelgeuse had conjured up a long fluffy white tail -- one which would, once inserted, act just like a real cat’s thanks to his juice. He just had to get it in her, which would mean overcoming the a somewhat impressive buttplug attached to its end. He’d definitely need lube, which he snatched out of thin air and popped open with a loud snap. He covered the metal bobble and dropped the bottle on his desk. 

“Lydsssss,” he hissed. “You’re going to be a good girl and hold still for me now, yes?” 

Lydia gasped and nodded against the floor. She realized that her gesture was probably ineffective with the way her ass would be obscuring his vision of her face, so she responding with a quiet “yes”.

Betelgeuse slapped her ass hard. Lydia screeched in surprise. It hurt! Quite a lot! “Bad kitten,” he purred. “Kittens can’t talk. Kittens meow. Kittens purr. Kittens yowl.” The cat noises were drawn out lewdly. Lydia mewed in agreement. She didn’t want to get slapped again. That shit had hurt.

Betelgeuse grabbed her hip, holding her steady with one cold hand. The other guided the rounded tip of the plug to her tiny asshole. “Steady,” he said, pushing it slowly into her. “Push out, kitten.” Lydia pushed out, and the plug popped inside suddenly, rushing into her body on the wave of force Betelgeuse had given it. Lydia hissed. It was cold, and large, and very solid. It forced her body to conform around it, instead of it conforming to her. She felt something swish against her legs quickly and angrily. Was it the tail? Was it moving? She really was a cat now.

Betelgeuse hauled Lydia back up by the hip. She squealed as this drove the plug into her in a new and interesting way. He grinned nastily. “Turn around, kitten.”

Lydia shuffled around to face him. She was kneeling, her butt resting on her heels, her paws together in front of her. Her tail was curling around her thigh -- for warmth or comfort, he wasn’t certain which.

“Kittens like milk,” he said, looking at her in such a way that she felt compelled to mew encouragingly. “Good kittens get a reward. Get under my desk. I have work to do.”

Lydia padded underneath his desk on her hands and knees. The floor was very hard and somewhat uneven, betraying its age and slight disrepair. She knelt under the desk, her eyes seeming to flash at him from the darkness. Betelgeuse brought his chair forward, boxing Lydia in and trapping her in a tiny wooden cube. He stretched out his legs a bit, to either side of her body. She was so small -- she fit there so well. He brought down his fly -- he never wore underwear -- and his hard cock slapped against his stomach, finally freed from its cloying fabric prison. He pushed it down and held it out to her. 

“Here, kitten.” She came forward, opening wide and accepting him into her hot, wet mouth. “I’m not really ready to do anything more yet, but if you could just keep me a little warm,” he trailed off, grabbing something jingly from the top of the desk. He reached under her head, connecting something to her collar at the front and then snapping it to a ring on his chair she hadn’t noticed before. It brought her even further down onto his cock, causing her to gag and tear up. The strict leather leash wouldn’t allow her to pull off of the significant length he’d stuffed into her. 

“Oh, come on. You’re gonna be there for a while. Might as well get used to it.”

She certainly was there for a while. At first, any time he’d shifted, she’d gag hard and he’d admonish her and say something threatening. As the minutes went by, her gag reflex seemed to accept the large intruder and calm down. He dipped into her throat every so often as he shifted above her, clearly busy writing or typing or something. Suddenly, she felt something nudge up against her clit. It started buzzing. It was inaudible, but Lydia could certainly feel it -- it was torturously soft and excruciatingly precise. She tried to hold still, but started squirming a little, moving around under the table.

Above her, Betelgeuse tsked. He reached down and somehow ratcheted the leash holding her to his chair even shorter, firmly inserting himself into her throat. As he did this, she heard a knock on the door. She tried desperately to get off his cock or do something but the simple leash held her strictly to his solid pole. She was too frightened to make any sort of noise. Betelgeuse asked the person to come in. 

As far as Lydia could tell, it was another girl from her class looking for academic help. She couldn’t focus much, caught between trying to keep breathing and trying not to make any noise, tormented by the twitching shaft in her throat and the vibrator tickling her clit. She shook slightly with the effort. In response, the vibrations increased in intensity. Lydia clenched her eyes shut and hunched over herself as much as she could. All of a sudden, she felt certain that she was going to come. And then the vibrations were gone. So was the girl who’d come in.

Betelgeuse didn’t say anything, but after a few minutes, the vibrations started up again. This cycle went on endlessly. People would come into the room, Betelgeuse would work, and Lydia would be tormented with orgasms she couldn’t reach, denied by the omnipotent vibrations attacking her. The leash was slowly shortened until he was buried entirely within her, her nose pressed into his gut and his pubes tickling her nostrils. It was hypnotic in its complacency. Lydia focused on her breathing, trying to keep from choking, trying to ignore the vibrator and trying not to make any noise. Her body felt numb and faraway. She was half-dreaming when Betelgeuse unclipped the leash and slid his rigid cock out of her throat, strings of thick mucus connecting it to her mouth, which was dangling open without anything to fill it. 

“Kitten, you’ve been so good. It’s time you get a reward,” he said. He patted his lap. Lydia looked at him for a long, long, uncomprehending moment before a light came to her eyes. She slowly clambered up to perch on his muscular thighs, facing him, her tail curling sinuously around his wrists as he steadied her, positioning her over his cock and then suddenly forcing her down onto it. Lydia yowled exactly like a cat would as he did so, no prompting necessary. Her tail shot out for balance and her paws scrabbled at his shoulders as she lost her center of balance and was fully impaled on his throbbing member. 

“Okay, babes,” he growled. “You’re up. Ride me, and maybe I’ll let you cum.” The vibrations seemed to have vanished alongside the leash connecting her to his chair, but Lydia’s deep, deep need to come was still roaring inside of her. She hauled herself up with trembling, half-felt thighs and slapped herself back down, half falling, half lowering. It felt amazing. He was so big, and the solid buttplug in her ass made him feel even larger. He was hitting something that felt overwhelming, good but almost too much. She gritted her teeth and tried again, working up to a heavy rhythm which gradually grew faster and faster. She really, really wanted to come.

Lydia started to tire. How long had she been doing this? It felt like she’d been on the edge for hours. Her legs had gone from deadened to firey with pain, and the fire in her belly had grown alongside it. Logically, she knew she should’ve come a long time ago. She looked up at Betelgeuse, who was grinning maliciously down at her, deeply enjoying the ineffectual yet delicious working of his cock. He had finally figured out how to block her from coming. This time, she wouldn’t kick him out until he was good and ready, and that wouldn’t be before he’d finally, finally gotten her to say his fucking name. He reached out and grabbed her by the throat.

“Babes, I think I know why ya can’t come. It’s guilt for your inattention. Being a kitten just wasn’t enough for you. You can apologize to me. Use my goddamn name too. Show some respect, for once in your worthless life.”

Lydia moaned. He’d let her come! He was going to let her come! He knew just what would help her. He was so smart. She could do this. 

“Please, Betelgeuse, I’m so sorry,” she gasped out between slaps, her voice hoarse from deepthroating him. “I’ll pay attention in the future, I swear.”

“Say it again.” The room seemed to have gotten inexplicably darker. His eyes were yellow slits and his teeth glistened in the half-light. 

“I’m sorry, Betelgeuse!” Lydia squeaked, suddenly simultaneously terrified and also even closer to the edge than she’d thought possibly.

He grabbed her hips hard, digging his ragged talons into the soft layer of fat padding her out. He slammed up into her quickly and roughly, her thighs shaking with the effort required to meet him and not simply collapse. He leaned forwards and bit deeply into her neck, drawing blood. Lydia screamed.

“I’m so sorry! Betelgeuse!” He slapped into her. She was so close. “Betelgeuse!” Almost, almost, almost. He licked roughly over the bite, his tongue dry, the pain drawing her even further out of her mind. “Betelgeuse!”

Betelgeuse felt his powers return, crashing into him hard and knocking him straight out of her dream. He fell back through the mirror, slamming against the confines of the space. He shook himself off, patting down his jacket and shaking out his arms, cracked his neck, then took a running leap through the mirror and into Lydia’s room. Finally. He was fucking free. And he wasn’t going to fuck it up this time. 

Betelgeuse landed on her floor with a burst of power, shaking the bed Lydia was just starting to sit up on. She looked at him with absolute horror in her eyes. Now the little bitch got it. He snapped his fingers at her and juiced her into a tight hogtie, stuffing a ball gag into her mouth. Lydia tried to scream around it and drooled copiously. He admired the nice job: the white ropes and ball gag contrasted sweetly with Lydia’s dark hair and with the black crop top and panties she had worn to bed. Adorable. He walked over to her and grinned down at her helpless body, watching her eyes try to strain up to see past his chest.

“Heya, babes. Thanks for lettin’ me out. Didn’t know that ya liked me _that_ much.” He cackled maliciously. “As a lil’ reward, I’ll let ya marry me! Ya get to tie down the most eligible bachelor in the Neitherworld. What a lucky girl, ladies and gents!”

Lydia tried to yell something utterly incomprehensible at him from behind the gag. He bent down and cupped one ear, leaning in close to her face. “What’s that, babes? I can’t hear ya! Maybe you should speak up a bit.” He laughed again, disgustingly pleased by the work he had wrought. 

Lydia was horrified. She’d woken up, jolted out of the confused remnants of some weird sex dream (again) when something had slammed into the floor and shook the room. She’d looked up to find the real corpse, not the one who’d been visiting her dreams. Apparently time softened everything, because she’d forgotten how moldy and dead and disgusting he really was. His eyes were deeply sunken into black pits, and the suit she’d thought so snazzy in her dreams was menacing and ragged.

He licked his lips with a horrifyingly long striped giraffe tongue and, before she collected herself enough to _put him back_ she was securely tied and gagged. She screamed at him, her anger suddenly overwhelming her sensibilities, and felt herself drool around the ballgag, the spit dripping off her chin.

He said some absolute bullshit, getting close enough that she could smell him: the thick scent of murky water and rich dirt. Had he drowned? It would explain the mold, maybe. God, that wasn’t important now. Lydia tried saying his name three times, but he just laughed and bent over her, mocking her, telling her to speak up, her words too garbled by the large ball stuffed into her mouth.

She watched in horror as he snapped himself into a dusty, sandy maroon suit, pointing at the wall and bringing out the alien priest and several skeleton witnesses who swayed brainlessly (Lydia thought that might be a rude description but then again they truly did have no brains, being skeletons). He hauled her up, huffing a little at her weight, and plunked her down on her knees next to him in front of the priest. 

Betelgeuse dropped his wife next to him, pretending to pant. It really took no effort to lift her, but anything to make her feel more vulnerable, right? Women were usually self conscious about their weight. He patted her head, then, surprised by the softness of her hair, stroked it, fingering the ends with his dirty fingers, his ragged nails catching the silky strands.

“Alright, alright, alright, let’s get on with this,” he growled at the priest. “Gimme the short version of the vows.”

The priest slowly led them through the ceremony, prompting first Betelgeuse, who quickly acquiesced, and then Lydia, for their ‘I do’s’. Betelgeuse “realized” that Lydia wouldn’t be able to talk after the priest prompted her for her half of the vows. He made a deeply apologetic face at the priest. “She’s a lil nervous. I’ll answer for her -- maybe she’s lost her voice.” He slapped a hand over her ballgag to mask the lack of moving lips, and spoke her vows quickly, adding a bunch of bullshit for effect because how could he not? “I’m Lydia Deetz and I’m of sound mind. The man next to me is the one I want. You asked me and I’m answering. Yes, I love that man of mine.” When prompted, he slipped a tarnished gold ring onto her finger, and it tightened ominously around her small digit.

The priest raised his hands, the book he clutched in one shaking slightly, and intoned, “I now pronounce you... man and wife. You may kiss the bride. Betelgeuse crouched down, turning Lydia to face him, and leaned in to attack her lips just as he vanished the ballgag, swallowing any words she might have been saying and slipping his tongue past her lips. She bit down hard, and he laughed and fake-moaned against her mouth, pulling away with a smirk.

Lydia immediately shouted “Betelgeuse Betelgeuse Betelgeuse!” as fast as she possibly could. Nothing happened. What the fuck? She craned her neck upwards to stare into his eyes. He was laughing.

“Babes, what the fuck do you think I goddamn married you for?”

Lydia noticed absently that they were alone again. The priest was gone, the skeletons had vanished: her room was back to normal. She felt distant from everything. Her ears rang slightly, and she had the sensation of floating. Betelgeuse was free? Juno was going to kill her. Her family was going to kill her. Betelgeuse was going to cause World War Three by pantsing Donald Trump, or something. 

She blinked, and she was lounging on a beach chair. The sun beat warmly on her face. She wasn’t tied up. No drool, no nothing. Her hand was cold. She looked down and saw that she was holding a coconut with a pink straw and an obnoxiously orange paper cocktail umbrella. She also noticed that she was wearing a humiliatingly tiny black bikini. For some reason, this was the detail which snapped her out of her trance. She shot upright, still gripping tightly onto the coconut, and slapped an arm over her chest, offering much more coverage than the tiny strips of fabric over her nipples. She heard a cackle to her left and looked to see Betelgeuse wearing, for some reason, his entire striped suit. He was stretched out on his side like a cat, and he looked deeply content.

“Babes! What do you think of the honeymoon? Pretty sweet, right? Wait’ll you see the _suite_...” He licked his lips and leered at her. “Take your arm off your chest, pretty please? Your tits are too pretty to hide away like that. Think of me! Think of the men! Think of the women who swing that way! Hell, think of anyone who appreciates tits!”

Lydia stared at him.

“Stunned, huh? C’mon, let’s fuck.” He reached out to grab her arm, and she leaned backwards out of his reach, still staring at him. Her face hadn’t changed. “What?” he growled. “You’re my fuckin’ wife. Get your ass over here and let’s consummate this marriage already.”

Lydia found her voice. “NO! You asshole! Take me back! I absolutely refuse to go anywhere near your vile dead body. I am not a goddamn necrophiliac and I never will be. You are the last person -- you’re not even a person -- you’re the last fucking thing I would ever sleep with on Earth and beyond. Even if my life depended on it. We are never, never, never going to sleep together. Put me back! I have a fucking life to lead in Winter River. You’re free. Go literally anywhere else, without me.”

Betelgeuse furrowed his brows at her. This set Lydia off again. “I didn’t want to marry you, I don’t want to fuck you, and I certainly don’t want a motherfucking honeymoon with you! This is a green card marriage only and I want absolutely nothing to do with you! Put. Me. Back!” Lydia’s voice rose several octaves into a banshee-like shriek as she started to completely lose her cool.

Betelgeuse lost his temper. It didn’t take much for that to happen. Sure, he could be patient when he needed to, but if someone pissed him off, he’d be pissed off. Just how it worked. “Listen up, _Lydia_,” he growled. “I’m not the one who gets wet dreaming about the big, bad Betelgeuse dominating her in bed. I’m not the one who can’t stop thinking about him. I’m not the one who called him out _knowing_ that he wanted to marry poor little Lydia who is never responsible for anything she does! Breaks every promise she makes! You owe me, little girl. But sure, if ya wanna be that way, I’ll take you back. But just so ya know, Neitherworld marriages are a little more strict on the faithfulness front that ya fuckin’ breather marriages. You can call me back whenever ya want though, I can still hear it, even if it’s not a summoning. Have fun with your boring-ass life -- and it’ll be pretty goddamn long, given that I’ll be around forever. Cheers, _toots_.”

Lydia fell back and found herself sitting propped against the foot of her bed. She was still dressed in the bikini, and the coconut was still in her hand. She lifted it to her mouth and took a sip. Holy shit. If nothing else, Betelgeuse could sure mix a good drink. Without thinking, she quickly sucked down the whole drink.

She felt a little woozy. It probably wasn’t a good idea to have chugged that whole thing right when she’d just had such a shocking experience. She tried to remember what he’d said. Faithfulness? Forever? Jesus christ. She’d thought this was a green card thing, not a sex thing. But of course it was a sex thing. This was Betelgeuse. What sex thing was it exactly? Lydia couldn’t remember. She giggled and slipped off the airy, tiny bikini, standing up and keeling over to land in her bed. She passed out, and didn’t dream at all the entire night. 

Lydia’s life went on in much the same way it had before she’d been married, except minus the hyper-sexual dreams. She did find that she was unable to get the ring off, which definitely interfered with her dating scene, but that paled when she found that, with the few men who’d look past the ring she couldn’t (in their eyes, wouldn’t) take off, she couldn’t say or do anything relationship-wise. If she tried to ask someone out for a date, she’d choke up. When reaching out for a non-casual, flirtatious touch, her arm would shake and fall. She couldn’t even take her pants off the one time a guy tried to hook up with her in a club bathroom. In fact, she found herself utterly unable to masturbate. She’d become chaste. It was deeply, deeply frusturating. 

Neitherworld marriages seemed pretty goddamn serious. Lydia sometimes found herself starting to wonder if Betelgeuse was having as tough a time of it as she was. She quickly reprimanded herself for even thinking of him whenever he popped into her head unannounced and unwanted. It was stupid, but she sometimes missed him, if just for the fact that he’d been the last good lay she’d had, even if it had all been in dreams she only half remembered. She did remember the feelings though, the lust and the submission and how sexy she thought he was. Weird.

Lydia was self-aware enough to understand that she was sugarcoating him, again, just like she had with her nightmares-turned-sex-dreams. He was disgusting and perverted. He’d tried to marry a fourteen-year-old kid, for christ’s sake. He might have been good at dream sex, but that didn’t mean he’d be good at regular sex. Also, he was dead. She just wasn’t that desperate yet.

A year and a half later, Lydia was getting pretty desperate. Work was nice, but boring. Other than that she didn’t do much. She cooked a bit, and ordered food, and watched shows. She didn’t really have any friends, although she was friendly with the other workers at the cafe. She saved her money, biked around town, took some photographs: but her life wasn’t really going anywhere. It felt endlessly monotonous. Tedious. 

Lydia decided she needed to visit the attic.

Adam and Barbara had left a long time ago, and the Deetzes had never cleared any of their stuff out of the attic. Too painful. Delia and Charles had grown fond of the two ghosts, despite their rocky start, and, in many ways, they had become Lydia’s second parents. When she came home one day and found them gone, with nothing but a scribbled note, “Juno came by and told us we’ve been released early -- she said we don’t have time to say”, cut off without an ending and the pen dropped on the table lifelessly, she’d cried. She’d lost half of her parents and two of her closest friends, all at once.

She knew that Delia and Charles had felt sad too. They had never said anything about it, but they’d been subdued for a long time, and had left the attic as a sort of shrine, so it was possible that the Handbook might still be up there. Adam and Barbara had never really gotten through the thing. “Stereo instructions,” they’d say, and Charles would nod knowingly. 

She pounded up the stairs and stopped at the door. She hadn’t been in there for years. What would she find? A shiver ran down her spine before she stopped and collected herself. Lydia, she scolded, you’re being silly. The worst thing you’ll find up there are bugs, and you’ve dealt with a whole lot worse than bugs in your life.

Lydia unlocked the door and pushed it open. She flipped the switch, and watched as the christmas-light-stars came on above Adam’s beloved model. The attic was far more dusty than Barbara would have ever let it get, but otherwise it looked the same as it had the last time she’d been up there. Lydia didn’t really know what exactly she’d expected, but this seemed obvious now that she was here.

Lydia searched through the attic and finally found the Handbook duct-taped to the bottom of a cushy armchair. She sank into the chair and read the table of contents. Nothing seemed to refer to ghost-human marriage. She flipped through it listlessly, exhausted by the ridiculously difficult search. Why on earth had the book been taped to the bottom of a chair?

She flipped the book upside down and shook it, and a sheaf of thick, hot pink paper fell out. Lydia looked at it askance. There was no way that had been in the book before. It was too thick to have been hidden between the pages, and the color! The color alone would have let anyone spot it from a mile away. And yet -- here it was, having fallen out of the handbook and right into Lydia’s lap. 

She picked it up and read through it, fascinated by the old-English/Medieval style of writing. It was all about ghost-human marriage! Basically, such a marriage fell under normal Neitherworld restrictions as well as some other special ones. The marriage was binding, so each partner was compelled to be faithful to the other (this prevented foolish marriages, lessening both marriage and divorce work and lifting a tiny amount of pressure from the massive, twisted Neitherworld bureaucracy). It also lasted forever. It was possible to get a divorce, but such a thing would take a very long time (and Lydia had no idea how to get to the Neitherworld anyway). In the case of a ghost marrying a human, both got some perks. The ghost got to walk freely among the living, and the human was functionally immortal and unaging. (Lydia was somewhat shocked by this. Twenty-two forever?)

Lydia spent the next week thinking about it constantly. She couldn’t help but be somewhat seduced by the idea of being immortal and unaging. And she was also deeply curious. What had Betelgeuse been up to since they’d gotten married? He couldn’t have sex? How was he doing on that front? Based on the lecherous front he’d put up for her, probably not well, but was it a front, or was it how he really felt? Surely after so many years of not getting any, one’s libido calmed down. Then again, her libido sure as fuck hadn’t. She hadn’t known how frustrating it could be to not be able to even touch yourself. Awful. 

Even Betelgeuse was starting to seem like a good option.

Well, who was she kidding? She had no better options. Her life was boring, her photography wasn’t going anywhere, and she was deeply sexually frustrated. Betelgeuse was seeming like a better and better idea with each passing day. 

Lydia tried not to think about that. Surely he hadn’t been able to get around the chastity restrictions? Was he still bumming around on Earth somewhere? Why hadn’t he come to see her? 

It didn’t take long for Lydia’s curiosity to get the better of her. She was very conscious of the fact that her life wouldn’t really go anywhere unless she did something to make it go somewhere, and she couldn’t think of anything better to do at the moment. Plus, if it worked, it would be easy. A super-powerful ghost at her beck and call? She could travel the world! She’d never need to work again! And she was really, really curious about what the Neitherworld looked like. Adam and Barbara hadn’t known, but had cautioned her about the surrealistic dunes of Saturn, which, quite frankly, sounded mesmerizingly beautiful. Lydia really wanted to see everything. And fuck it, you know? She had one life to live and one shot at this. She wanted to take it, not just waste away in Winter River.

One week later, Lydia gave in. She couldn’t stop thinking of the possibilities. She prepared herself. The cafe wasn’t nearly as reliant on her as it had been at the start, and she was able to arrange it such that she could be away for a week. “I’ll call if I need more time,” she said, not certain she would be able to call. Honestly, what if Betelgeuse was tired of being on Earth and just decided to kill her? What if she just didn’t have a phone (more likely)? What if she was somewhere without cell service? If she got him to take her to the Neitherworld, that would be the most likely of all.

Lydia came home that night and took a long hot shower. She put on fresh makeup, and dressed carefully. She wasn’t certain of where she’d be going, and she didn’t want to give Betelgeuse any access to any areas she didn’t want him having access to, so she put on black jeans, a purple hoodie, and combat boots. She lit a lemongrass-scented candle and sat down on her bed. Nobody was really going to come looking for her if this didn’t work out. She called Delia and her dad once a month, more or less, and she’d called them just last week. Plus, they wouldn’t really be bothered or alarmed if she wasn’t responsive.

Lydia took a deep breath, suddenly very worried. What if he didn’t come when she called his name? He wasn’t bound to it any more. For some reason, this wasn’t something Lydia had even thought to consider.

“Shit,” she hissed under her breath. It was too late to worry about that, though. She had to try. Lydia took another deep breath, clenched her hands on her thighs, and spoke. “Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse!”

She looked around. Nothing changed.

Lydia sat completely still for about a minute. Nothing happened.

Against her will, she felt her eyes start to burn, and her head fell forward. A tear welled up and overflowed, dripping off the end of her nose to land with a splat on her thigh. Lydia looked at the dark spot for a moment and burst into sobs. She let herself fall over onto the bed and curled up, crying hard. 

She’d built this up too much. She’d pinned far too much hope on one completely irresponsible guy. She was such a fool. 

Lydia, emotionally exhausted, quickly cried herself to sleep.

Betelgeuse, who’d been watching invisibly from the corner of her room, grinned.

When Lydia had told him to fuck off, he’d complied. Why? Well, shocker, he could play a long game. Betelgeuse was a pretty experienced conman, and he was a ghost. He had all the time in the world with Lydia, and he wouldn’t benefit in any way from her being terrified of him.

So when Lydia said git, he’d got. Not that he’d left-left. He’d juiced them both back to her bedroom, but he’d made himself completely invisible and immaterial, watching hungrily as she’d chugged his drink, stripped, and passed out. 

It was actually, honestly, really hard to restrain himself. It hadn’t happened during the kiss, but just afterwards: he’d regained sensation. He could feel. He could see. He could taste and touch and listen and everything was so glorious. He wanted Lydia -- she was even more beautiful when he could smell her shampoo and sweat and see how the strands of her hair fell across the planes of her shoulders and back. 

He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and running a hand, rematerialized, up her thigh. She was so warm. He was room temperature, something weird about being dead, but Lydia, alive, was like a ray of warmth. Her skin was so smooth, with tiny golden hairs which sizzled gloriously as his fingers trailed over them. He loved it. He wanted to touch and to feel and to... he had to get out of there.

Betelgeuse snapped his fingers and was gone, but not before leaving her with one parting gift. He knew that the marriage would keep her from having sex with other people, but he wanted her truly desperate for him. He wanted her aching, dripping from the memories of their shared dreamtime. He juiced her, extending the sex clause to her own self. She wouldn’t be able to masturbate now either. This, of course, did not apply to him. She had no way of juicing him. 

He’d traveled the world. He’d gone deep-sea diving, and seen some horrifying “fish”, if one could even truly call them that. He’d sat on beaches and watched the surf come in. He’d traversed forests and deserts and sat for weeks and just gazed at the stars. He’d eaten foods he’d never eaten before, foods which hadn’t even been conceived of the last time he’d been able to taste. He tried computers and phones and alcohol and strip clubs and casinos and spas and hot springs. He dipped a toe into every luxury he saw. 

He knew Lydia would call him back at some point -- after all, she was only human, and humans were curious and weak for their emotions. He didn’t expect anything super interesting to happen on the career front while she was in Winter River, and he also didn’t see her moving away any time soon. He could be wrong, but no matter what, he was pretty sure she’d call him back. He’d give her five years, and if she didn’t call him by then, he’d go back and give her a little push. He was, at the moment, content to simply experience all the things he’d missed for so long: sounds and tastes and wind and touch and sights. It was glorious.

Even more glorious was when, only a year later (much faster than he’d expected), Lydia had called him. He woke up from where he was curled into a ball on the side of a mountain to hear her voice ringing through him like he was a crystal wineglass and she was a fork. He reached inside of himself and latched onto her and shot himself there.

She looked much the same, though she’d certainly dolled herself up for him this time. She had on dark makeup and a soft, thick, deep royal purple hoodie. She looked excited. He didn’t show himself, eager to see what she’d do. He was deeply gratified to see that she cried, and watched with interest as she fell asleep right there, probably worn out by her first strong emotion in a year.

He floated and looked at her for a bit, his chin resting on his fist and his head tilted to one side, considering. He came to a decision, dropping down to rest on the bed. He rematerialized slowly and snuggled himself up behind her. Just as he remembered, she was furnace-hot, even through her hoodie. He whuffed into her hair and spooned her close, letting himself drop off to the scent of her honey shampoo.

Lydia woke up slowly. She felt cozy and warm and happy. Why on earth would she feel that way, her sleepy brain pondered, hugging the arm covering her tummy closer. Wait. Arm?

Lydia sat bolt upright, suddenly, uncomfortably awake, possessed of an alarming amount of clarity. Someone was in her bed. Who the fuck would be in her bed? She turned around slowly, freaked out by the possibilities running through her mind, terrifying her with what could be behind her. 

She saw pale, dry hair, mold across a pallid cheek... it was him. That motherfucker. Betelgeuse had the fucking balls to get into bed with her after ghosting her when she had summoned him. His moldy ass was in bed with her, and his arm was around her stomach. Awful.

Lydia took a deep breath, and decided to do nothing. She gently picked up his arm, which was surprisingly heavy. She giggled a little when the word “dead weight” floated through her mind. Lydia slid out from under it and gently placed it back on the bed. She tiptoed off to the bathroom to pee, wash her face, and brush her teeth. 

Lydia stared at herself in the mirror. What on earth was she going to do? He’d actually showed up, but she hadn’t really planned for this. Sure, she had summoned him hoping he’d show up, but that had been yesterday. Why had she wanted some pervert who’d leap into bed with her the second she was unconscious? And why hadn’t he shown up when she’d called?

Lydia knew that she was going to talk to him. Anything else was just bluster. She’d called him here, after all, and he knew it and she knew it and there was no point in pretending anything else. She wanted him here, even after how he’d invaded her dreams and kidnapped her and forced her to marry him for the second time. Lydia wanted out. She wanted to talk to him and finally do something fun with her life.

But she couldn’t let him know that. Shit, he had to know that. And if he knew she wanted something from him, he’d use her. That was how people like Betelgeuse worked. 

Lydia shook her head and stood up from where she’d been unnecessarily stooped over the sink after brushing her teeth, gazing into the very bottom of the beveled edge of the bathroom mirror. She rubbed her nose in embarrassment and went downstairs to get coffee.

Lydia was sitting at the dining room table, sipping a cup of delicious, hot, black coffee, when someone dropped both hands onto her shoulders and leaned over her to sniff hard at the steam rising from her cup.

“Ooh, babes, that smells great,” Betelgeuse rumbled. His voice was deep and cracked with sleep, but he seemed excited by the promise of coffee. Lydia didn’t catch any of it, shocked by how tall he seemed and by how his hands spanned her shoulders. She’d forgotten how big he was compared to her. Well, she knew she was tiny, but he was unnecessarily large in both stature and personality and it was already getting on her nerves. Something deep inside of Lydia disagreed with this assessment, but Lydia squashed that thought down and smiled up at Betelgeuse instead.

“What was that?” she said, sweet as sugar and twice as pissed off as before. “Do I hear that the great Betelgeuse himself has finally deigned to drop in? And he demands coffee? Not even a good morning?”

Betelgeuse ignored all the anger she was trying to project at him and instead smiled happily down at her, dropping a kiss on her forehead. He let go of her shoulders and juiced himself into the chair across from her, pulling his own cup of coffee out of thin air and leaning back, stretching his legs out in front of him. 

“Good to know the ol’ ball ‘n’ chain missed me.” He grinned at her, his eyes dark, filled with promises Lydia didn’t want to consider. She looked away. He took this as some sort of capitulation and he laughed. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist all of this,” he hissed, running a hand lazily down his chest and over his stomach. He looked up to see her watching him and inched his hand lower, only to have her eyes fly away and up to the ceiling. 

“Betelguese! Stop it!”

“Easy on the b-words, babes, huh? Just got me here and ya already wanna get rid of me? I’m a busy guy, you know. Can’t have chicks like you constantly dragging me all over the place just to bitch at me about how they’re so desperately sexually attracted to me they can’t function.”

Lydia stared at him. What other girls? She knew that wasn’t really what she should have been focusing on, but she couldn’t help herself. Had he found a way around that fucking chastity bullshit? Of course he had. What a motherfucking asshole. How dare he figure out how to get his own rocks off and leave her in the goddamn dirt. Rage filled her again and pushed aside any embarrassment or fear.

“Now you listen to me!” Lydia roared, leaping up out of her seat and slapping her cup down onto the table. Coffee spilled across the wooden surface, but she didn’t even bother to look down at it. “You’ve fucking fucked me over with this marriage shit! I thought it would be a marriage in goddamn name only! I want to live my own life, with my own relationships, just like you’ve been. You had better tell me how to get around this right now, before I kill you again, you absolute motherfucker.” She stopped, chest heaving, only to realize he was staring right at it. She sat slap bang right back down in a crimson haze of embarrassment.

“Babes! You _actually_ became too horny to function without me! I’m so flattered.” He grinned at her and batted his eyelashes. 

Lydia crossed her arms and turned away. For some reason, she felt close to tears. “Come on. Don’t be such an asshole. I’ve been through the handbook time and time again, and there’s no loophole I can see. I just want to live my life. Is that so wrong?”

Betelgeuse was getting a little pissed off. He hid it though, not wanting to reveal any part of his hand. “Alright, wifey, if ya wanna cheat on me that bad what am I gonna do about it? Ya know, I do think I should get something in return for telling you all my secrets. How about a date. I’ll come back tonight at seven, take you out for a little somethin’ somethin’ and we’ll both be satisfied and on our ways. Sounds great! I’ll see you then. Dress a lil sexy, okay?” He blew her a kiss and was gone, coffee and all.

Lydia groaned and almost banged her head into the table, but thought better of it. She chose instead to gently cradle her head on the table with her arms and rock back and forth. That asshole. And now she had coffee in her hair.

**

Come seven, Lydia had dressed up. Not sexy, but confident. She was wearing black and she didn’t have a lot of skin on show, but she felt sexy -- so I guess sexy = confident, or confident = sexy or something. Anyway, she felt sexy even if she didn’t think Betelgeuse would think that she had complied with his instructions in any way.

A few hours after he’d left, fortified by a long hot shower and a hot breakfast consisting of more than just one cup of coffee, she’d given up on being mad at him. Well, sure, she was still mad at him, but she understood a bit more of where he was coming from and was willing to go on a date with him if it meant that she would be able to talk to him about all the things she wanted (not just sex like her tired morning brain had implied). 

Lydia put on her lipstick, a black top lip and a red bottom lip, and fluffed her hair in the mirror. She was ready to get some free dinner and decide her future. This would probably be the first extended period of time she had ever spent with her husband and it would likely go a long way in her decision as to whether or not she would give being really married a try -- and if he would try it with her.

The doorbell rang, and Lydia walked downstairs to open the door. Betelgeuse, who was obviously the person on the other side of the door, grabbed her hand and dipped into a deep kiss over it. He slicked his hair back, planted both hands on the sides of the doorway and leaned forward towards her.

“Ready ta go, babes?” He rasped, smiling down at her.

“Sure,” Lydia said, deadpan, and walked under his arm and past him. He shut the door and bounced after her, slinging an arm around her shoulders and talking a mile a minute right into her ear. She couldn’t help but notice that he was much, much cleaner than the last time she’d seen him. He smelled better, his coat was more white than grey, and his mold looked greener and fresher. 

“Lyds! I got this great reservation lined up for us. Super romantic. You’re gonna dig it! It’s gonna be great.” He expounded at length on the romantic tendencies of chicks and the restaurant’s many redeeming qualities as he walked with her to the end of the lawn. Lydia turned to look at him.

“Betelgeuse.”

“Yeah?” He grinned at her and shut up.

“How are we getting to the restaurant. There’s no car here.” Lydia maintained her emotionless tone of voice, which she noticed deterred him not one bit. 

“Like this!” he cackled, and they spun into a dazzling, whirling, pulling kaleidoscope of force. It pulled at her hair and her clothes and was suffocating and loud and bright and then they were standing outside a restaurant. Well, Betelgeuse was standing and Lydia was grasping onto him like a drowning man. Truly, it’s one thing to believe in the strange and unusual and a whole other thing to experience it unexpectedly and unpleasantly at the beginning of a date with a guy you wouldn’t trust with the safety of a hair on your head.

Lydia pushed herself off him and staggered back to sit on a conveniently placed bench. “Woah... that’s teleportation? I don’t think I like it.”

Betelgeuse smiled down at her. The emotions his smile conveyed included comprehension, empathy, kindness, and a worry that they would be late for their reservation.

“We’re going to be late for our reservation,” he said.

“Oh,” Lydia said.

**

The restaurant Betelgeuse had chosen was, strangely enough, an Italian place. It looked somewhat fancy but not intimidatingly so. Lydia did feel as though her outfit was appropriate, which confused her a little as she hadn’t realized that she had been worried about that. She wouldn’t have expected to worry about her outfit when she was negotiating with a literal demon. Or poltergeist. Whatever.

Betelgeuse took her elbow and led her into the restaurant. She was grateful for the steadiness of his arm. It felt strong and solid, and she was able to support herself on it as she still felt somewhat weak. He left her behind near the door, and went to speak to the host. He loomed over him intimidatingly, which made Lydia giggle, thinking of Lyndon B. Johnson’s famous negotiation techniques.

Betelgeuse came back to collect her with an arm around her waist, and he strolled them over to the host, who was sweating and rubbing his hands together nervously. “Come with me!” he said, bowing them into the restaurant. It was a lovely space, filled with heavy dark red and brown velvets, and lit only by strategically spaced candles. Several other couples were sitting with their heads together at the tables, which were all for two. The tables were nicely separated, lending privacy to each pair.

The host brought the two to a table in the very back of the restaurant, slightly shifting aside a thick, draping curtain to usher the two into the comfortable armchairs across from each other at the table. He set down two menus and bowed himself out of the semi-enclosed space.

Lydia perused the menu closely and decided on pappardelle with peas and tomato. She looked up to see Betelgeuse deeply focused in his own menu, so she gently set down hers and stared into the depths of the candle in the center of the uncomfortably small table.

A waiter appeared silently, hands clasped behind his back. He spoke softly. “Are sir and madam ready to order?”

Betelgeuse grinned at Lydia. “Are ya ready, babes?”

Lydia leaned her head on her hand and tried her best to hit him with a sardonic look. It had no effect. “Yes,” she deadpanned.

“Great!” he said. “We’d like the fig crostini with risotto, the house salad, and the mozzarella croquettes. I’d like the lasagna, and we’ll take your best wine to drink.”

Lydia looked at him askance. How would they eat so much food? She dismissed it and ordered. “I’ll have the pappardelle with the peas and marinara.”

The waiter nodded and disappeared. After a few minutes of awkward silence, he returned with a bottle of wine, which he opened and poured a taster of for Betelgeuse, who pronounced it acceptable. He poured a glass for each of them, and disappeared again. Lydia thought him a very efficient waiter.

She took a sip of the wine and found it very drinkable and quite delicious. She decided to be brave, and looked up at Betelgeuse. He was staring at her. It was a little unnerving, but she persevered.

“So how exactly have you been able to be unfaithful?”

“Big assumption assuming I have,” he said. He smirked at her and leaned back to take a sip of the wine. 

“Listen, I want to talk to you without worrying constantly that you’re lying to me. I need some sort of assurance that you’re being honest with me.”

“I can be honest but I want something in return.”

“What do you want then?” she asked, and quickly added, “Nothing sexual.”

“Aw man! All my ideas out the window.” She looked up quickly but saw he was laughing at her and glared at him.

“I’m sorry, is this just a joke to you?” she spat, angry that he was so easily able to get under her skin.

“What if we trade? I answer a question for you, you answer a question for me.”

“What if I don’t want to answer a question?” Lydia asked.

“Then the non-answering party owes the questioning party a favor. Fair?”

“Fair,” Lydia said.

The waiter arrived with their appetizers, piling them all around the little round table. He placed tiny plates in front of each of them.

Betelgeuse picked up his fork and loaded up his plate, happily beginning to munch on a croquette. 

“Why did you order so much food?” Lydia asked.

“Is that your first question?” Betelgeuse asked. Lydia snorted.

“Absolutely not,” she said.

“Then I’m not answering it,” he said.

Lydia nibbled on a crostini. “Have you been cheating on me?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

Lydia gaped at him. Somehow this possibility had never crossed her mind. She’d never once doubted that a man who seemed to be such a massive pervert would endure a year of chastity for no reason whatsoever. Maybe he hadn’t been able to figure out a loophole? Then why did he not bother her?

“Why did you call me back?” Betelgeuse asked.

Lydia sighed. “I’m bored. I’m not having any fun and I want to do something else. You give me possibilities. And also the whole chastity thing is killing me a bit, not going to lie.”

Betelgeuse laughed at her, his eyes flashing in the gloam of the restaurant.

“Why did you come back?” Lydia asked.

“I’d like to fuck you. I think we’re quite compatible and I’d like to try having a wife in more than name only. We could be great together, possibly, and I want to see if we will be. You’re just my kind of kinky, babes.”

“You’re disgusting,” Lydia snarled. “I thought you said you weren’t a pervert.”

“Never said that, babes.” Thinking back, she had to admit he hadn’t, but she ignored that. “Do ya wanna have sex with me?”

“Not going to answer that,” Lydia huffed.

“Then you owe me a favor, babes,” he said. 

“Whatever,” she said.

Lydia picked at the appetizers for a bit more, before figuring out which question she wanted to ask.

“What would it be like to be your wife?”

“I’m a jealous guy, babes. I’d want exclusive rights to that sweet pussy of yours.” She didn’t have time to protest his language, as he steamrolled onward. “We’d hang out. Travel the world. Do whatever we want. We have eternity, after all, to get to know each other and to experience it all.”

Lydia looked at him for a long moment. The waiter arrived and cleared away the empty appetizer plates. When had they eaten all the appetizers? Must have been Betelgeuse, which at least sort of explained why he had ordered so many dishes. The waiter reappeared with two steaming plates of pasta and gently set them on the table in front of each of them. He bowed lightly and demurely inquired as to whether they needed anything. Betelgeuse said no, and the waiter politely dismissed himself.

Lydia dug into the pasta, forking up a long noodle and some peas. It was delicious. From Delia’s attempts at artistic foods, she was able to guess that the pasta was handmade, and the peas were deliciously fresh. She was certainly glad that she wouldn’t be paying for this. “Are you going to ask a question,” she blurted out after a minute of deeply awkward silence.

“Yes,” he said. “Where do you want to go first?”

“Are we going to do this whole... wife husband thing then?” Lydia asked.

“Is that your question?”

“Sure,” Lydia said.

“Yeah, why not? Now answer my question or give me a second favor.”

Lydia thought for a long minute. She wasn’t very well-travelled, despite her dad’s cosmopolitan affections. But the answer was clear. “I want to see the Neitherworld.”

“If ya wanna,” Betelgeuse said, agreeing surprisingly easily. “I can think of a few places ya probably would enjoy.”

“I want a few ground rules though. No kidnapping me. If I want to go back, let me go back. No rape, no dream sex, nothing without my consent.”

“Alright,” he said. She’d be gagging for him, literally and figuratively, quickly enough that her “rules” wouldn’t really matter. And why would she want to go back? This would be perfect. 

They chatted and finished the dinner. Betelgeuse paid and ushered her out of the restaurant. “Do you wanna go home or go somewhere else?” he asked.

“What somewhere else are you thinking of?” Lydia said. She wasn’t really looking forward to travelling with him again but knew there was no other way to get home or wherever they might be going.

“Ya said ya wanna see the Neitherworld. Why not now?”

“Sure!” Lydia said. She actually was quite interested to go to the Neitherworld, and a bit buzzed on the lovely wine they’d had. She didn’t feel like she was going to sleep any time soon, but even if she did, surely ghosts had beds. Right?

“Hold on tight, Lyds,” he said, grabbing her and juicing them straight to the Neitherworld. They tumbled straight down from the ceiling and slammed into the blood-red mattress of a weathered brown coffin bed. Lydia laughed and rolled off of Betelgeuse, thankful that she had landed on him rather than the other way around. She was quite petite compared to him and he probably would have squished her like a bug.

This time, the journey had been much less jarring. She didn’t feel sick, just exhilarated. It was actually a very nice feeling. She sat up in bed, smoothing down her hair.

“Where to first?” she asked. Betelgeuse grinned at her and reached out to grab her by the waist.

“Ya sure ya don’t wanna just stay here, baby girl?” He leaned in and placed a kiss at the base of her neck.

“I don’t, thank you very much. Please get off of me.”

Betelgeuse complied, leaning back with a super-innocent face and raising his hands in mock horror. “Fine! Fine. But I wanna call in my favor.”

“Alright,” said Lydia. “No sex.”

“I’ll have ya know that ya absolutely did not specify that when we made this deal.”

Lydia just looked at him. 

“I wanna dress you however I want for the next twelve hours.”

“Sure,” said Lydia. That didn’t seem that bad. The worst he could do would be to make her go around naked, and if he tried to do that she just wouldn’t go anywhere. She didn’t think he’d get his kicks off of humiliating her in public, though, so she wasn’t too worried. 

He pointed a finger gun at her, closed an eye, and said “Pow!”. Lydia looked down to see what he’d chosen for her. Gone were her jeans and shirt, and, in their place, a short tight black dress. It hugged her in all the right places, pushing up and tucking in. She looked great, but it certainly wasn’t something she normally wore and she didn’t feel very comfortable. Then she shifted and realized that she was completely lacking any kind of bra. Thankfully he had provided her with an incredibly flimsy lacy thong, but this dress was ridiculously short: she wouldn’t even be able to bend over in it!

But if nothing else, Lydia would honor their agreement. She didn’t say anything, but something must have shown on her face because Betelgeuse smirked at her before raising a hand for her and hovering out of the bed. She grabbed his hand and stepped carefully out of the coffin. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of complaining, but she also didn’t want to give him a free show. 

He slung his arm around her shoulders comfortably. She was shorter than him, so she made a nice arm rest, and it allowed him to easily guide her out of the room and down the hallway. Lydia couldn’t help but gape at the house. They passed by room after room filled with weird, dilapidated crap. A library with hundreds of books stacked to the ceiling obscuring the shelves, everything covered with a thick layer of grey dust. A room filled with teetering piles of magazines in yellow and orange milk crates. A bathroom which looked like it hadn’t been used... ever, with absolutely nothing hoarded in it. 

It looked like it would be a lot of fun to explore, but a bitch to clean. Lydia lost herself for a second in a daydream of being the Sophie to Betelgeuse’s Howl and cleaning the entire castle. What a job. Confronted with this, she felt a sudden rush of admiration for the fictional woman, especially trapped in a creaky old body as she was cursed to be. Lydia came back to herself when Betelgeuse tugged her down a flight of stairs and she tripped, falling for a second before he caught her, grumbling something probably rude and setting her back on her feet.

Lydia yanked down her dress and raced after him, trying to be careful on the polished wooden steps. They looked very fancy, but the dark wood was slick and treacherous. Why were these stairs even polished, given the neglect of the rest of the house? How often was Betelgeuse around here? Did he prefer to walk or float?

They arrived, after a long twisting journey down several stories of house, in a large living room with a massive, painfully magenta sofa facing a little boxy television set. Betelgeuse stopped dead at the bottom of the steps and Lydia slammed into his back, carried by the momentum of the flights and flights of slick steps. Instantly, two heads popped over the back of the sofa, and two... people? clambered over the back of the sofa with exclamations of surprise and greeting.

It was a spider in a wild shade of neon pink which actually went very nicely with the couch, like a tacky Valentine’s Day card, and a skeleton with a tiny pencil moustache. They fought with each other for the center of attention, the spider’s southern drawl and the skeleton’s french accent getting louder and louder.

“Betelgeuse! How in the Neitherworld did you get out so —” “Be-at-el-geuse, you are back! ‘Ow ‘ave you done —” “Who’s that gal? Is she —” “We did not expect you so soon!”

Betelgeuse scowled at them, making as horrifically angry a face as he could. They fell silent. “This is my wife. Lyds, these are the people I charge money to live in my roadhouse.”

Lydia gaped at them, then realized what she was doing, and, not wanting to appear rude, snapped her mouth shut and gave a little wave. “Hi there! What are your names? I’m Lydia.”

The spider was the first one to respond, seemingly shell-shocked by the revelation that someone had actually married Betelgeuse and that Betelgeuse was now spending time with that person. Seemingly voluntarily. “I’m Ginger, honey. It’s so nice to meet you! Is he doing something horrible to you? Are you alr—”

“Stuff it, Ging,” Betelgeuse growled. “She married me because she wanted to.”

“My name is Jacques,” said the skeleton, his beret rakishly askew over one expressive eye socket. “It is my pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He bowed deeply, and Lydia giggled, deeply charmed by Betelgeuse’s roommates.

“It’s so cool to meet you guys! I never would’ve guessed that someone like Betelgeuse would actually have roommates. No offense,” she added, turning to him quickly and grabbing onto her arm.

“Babes, ya know almost nothin’ about me.” He grabbed her ass, and Lydia squeaked, standing bolt upright. She tried to subtly shake his hand off, but no luck. His thick fingers curled around her hipbone and his claws dug into the delicate, thin skin at the crease of her thigh. It felt ticklish and dangerous, and it sent frissons of electric sensation up and down her spine.

Before his roommates could extend this into an actual conversation, rather than simple introductions, he starts hustling Lydia out of the room and down another hallway. “Hated talkin’ to ya guys! Smell ya later!” he yells back at them in an incredibly childish way. It seems that he doesn’t really want Lydia talking to anyone else, and he especially doesn’t want to talk to the boring assholes who’ve been renting from him for a century or two. Ugh.

He leads her quickly down the hallway, juicing it a bit so that they move a lot faster than they appear to, and skids to a halt in front of an unassuming white door with a stainless steel doorknob. The door is streaked with grime. It smells familiar, but Lydia can’t place it. Then Betelgeuse opens the door, and she knows.

It’s a garage. It smells like her grandparent’s garage did: carpet and new car and cleaning product and Dr. Pepper. There’s even the quintessential grandparent garage accessory: the ancient fridge covered in tacky vacation magnets, chugging along half-heartedly. Lydia leans closer to examine the magnets. They appear to all contain photos of Ginger and Jacques at different Neitherworld spots, waving and smiling under cheesy slogans. It’s kind of adorable.

The garage is mostly filled with boxes and shelves and cleaning products. It seems to be a storage space, apart from the ridiculously flashy car sitting in the very center of the space, shiningly clean and extremely yellow. Lydia walks over to the car, which is low-slung and quite expensive looking. It’s got an open top and deep tan leather seats, and it looks like it might have those funny headlights which pop up out of the hood when they need to be used. Frankly, it’s kind of gorgeous. She looks back at Betelgeuse, who is leaning against the wall next to the door.

“Is this your car?” she asks. She hopes it’s his and not Jacques’ or Ginger’s. But why else would he have brought her here if it isn’t?

“Yeah,” he says, gruffly. He seems vaguely embarrassed by how impressed she is by it. Lydia, emboldened by his declaration, reaches out a hand and strokes the car’s hood. It’s warm. Why is it warm?

The car’s headlights pop up and the whole thing curves around her to stare at her. Lydia throws her hands up in fright, squeaking a little bit before she can stop the sound from coming out of her mouth. The car smiles at her, eyes looking happy and excited, and meeps. Meeps?

“Doomie,” Betelgeuse says. “Chill out. This is Lydia. And yes, we are finally going to go for a drive.”

Doomie leaps up and down in place, making excited meepy car noises before settling back down into a normal car shape. Betelgeuse stalks around him to open the passenger door for Lydia. She slides in, running her hand over the leather of the seat. It’s awkward now that she knows the car is alive, but she can’t help herself. It looks so buttery smooth, and she discovers that it feels as good as it looks. Thankfully the car doesn’t do anything weird to make her feel bad for stroking it.

Betelgeuse plops himself down into the driver’s seat, grabbing the steering wheel in one hand and the shift stick in the other. He juices open the garage door, not bothering to look back over his shoulder as he puts Doomie into reverse and screeches out of the garage. Lydia spins back to stare over her shoulder, desperate not to miss her first glimpse of the Neitherworld.

It’s very, very weird. The sky is a deep and foreboding orange, and there’s no sun to be seen. It feels oppressive, and gives the illusion that outside will be hot and heavy, like the air before a thunderstorm in the summer. In fact, it’s rather the opposite. It’s cold, and dry, and there is no wind to be found anywhere whatsoever. It feels stagnant.

They’re zipping down a long purple-orange highway which twists and winds crazily. Lydia leans dangerously out over Doomie’s side door, looking down below the highway to see a vast desert. She startles backwards as a sandworm leaps out of the sand like a whale out of the water, hurtling upwards to loop several times around the floating road before plunging back down into the sand below. 

“Where are we going?” Lydia half-shouts. Although the Neitherworld doesn’t have any wind of its own, the car is going fast enough that the air whistling past them is quite loud. She can’t stop a grin from spreading across her face. This is so wild. So interesting. So... exactly what she had been hoping for. Thinking about it, she realizes that she wants this thing she has with Betelgeuse to work out a lot more than she thought she’d wanted it to. This is fun! She can’t remember the last time she had fun.

Betelgeuse conjures up sunglasses just so that he can slide them up to the top of his head. He looks over at her and grins crazily. He has very pointy canines, Lydia notes distractedly. “We’re gonna get ya some eye scream.”

“Ice cream?” Lydia asks. “I love ice cream!”

Betelgeuse laughs madly, pressing his foot down on the accelerator until they’re going so quickly that everything becomes a blur. 

He slows down as they suddenly return to a populated area, seemingly to give her a good view of the town. The shops they drive by are deeply, deeply weird. Hair salons advertising full-body shampoo/massage services, thrift shops which proudly declare their items “unwashed” and delis with strange foods she’s never seen before, in sizes that seem ridiculously large or small for any normal person. Some of the buildings have no doors or windows or any identifying features at all: just blocks of concrete.

The people on the sidewalks are even stranger. Some of them look normal. Some are gruesomely dead, proudly displaying how they died. Some of them remind her of the Capitol from the Hunger Games: weird body modifications that seem to serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. There are also some things walking around which don’t seem to be people. Strangely sized and colored animals, tall, tall beings completely covered in thick hair, were-creatures which seem like vile combinations of animals and people, even the proverbial little green men. It’s fascinating. Betelgeuse, who has brought his sunglasses back down to cover his eyes, completely ignores it all. He’s now wearing a greaser type of outfit: a grimy leather jacket, a once-white t-shirt, and ragged jeans. 

He parks Doomie in front of a building which proudly declares itself to be Florian Fortescue’s Eye Scream Parlor. Lydia doesn’t read the sign, too busy staring through the glass-fronted store at the eclectic mixture of beings inside, eating heaping bowls of ice cream and drinking thick, colourful milkshakes.

Lydia leaps out of the car the moment it stops. Betelgeuse follows her to the front of the store, slinging a heavy arm possessively around her shoulders. “What kinda ice cream do ya like, babes?”

“Oh, I love mint, and vanilla, and mango, and coffee... I’m kind of boring. I don’t really like chocolate or caramel though,” she shrugs apologetically. 

Betelgeuse grins down at her. “Can’t believe ya don’t like chocolate. Aren’t chicks supposed to dig that stuff? Wait, is it just because you’re not on ya period yet?” 

Lydia snarls. “You misogynistic bast--” he claps a hand over her face. It covers her chin and part of her nose, and she shakes her head until his hand has dislodged enough that she can breathe again. They’ve reached the counter, the line in the store having magically disappeared as soon as they entered.

“Hi there!” he grins sleazily at the employee behind the counter. The employee is shaking in terror and stark white, though Lydia can’t tell if that’s just his normal skin color and attitude. Maybe he froze to death? “I’ll have a death by chocolate shake with extra roaches and she’ll have the Deluxe with marshmallow sauce and extra whip.”

Lydia stays silent, marvelling at the wide variety of colorful ice creams behind the glass. She runs her eyes over the wide variety of crazy toppings: all the normal ones: sprinkles, whipped cream and sauces, but also fruits she’s never seen before, eyeballs, a jar of blood, boxes of insects scrambling crazily over themselves, tiny silvery dried fish, fingernails... Betelgeuse drags her to an empty booth in the corner of the window. It seems like he’s accepted that she’ll be spellbound by the Neitherworld for a bit longer, and that she’ll definitely want to window-gaze. He’s got their ice cream. His just looks like a chunky chocolate milkshake with chocolate whipped cream and a cherry, a stainless steel straw sticking out of the old-fashioned glass.

Hers is ridiculous. It’s a classic sundae dish, and almost a classic sundae. It’s got a banana at the bottom, and several scoops of colorful ice cream. There’s marshmallow sauce, and lots of whipped cream. But the sprinkles hurt her eyes to look at, and there are eyeballs in place of cherries. 

Lydia forgets herself, and gapes at him. “Can I eat these eyeballs? Are they human eyeballs?”

Betelgeuse rolls his eyes. “I’m not gonna kill ya, babes,” he says, slowly, as though this should be obvious. “Ya gotta keep healthy and all that shit. They’re perfectly fine to eat.”

Lydia decides to pretend not to notice that he didn’t answer her question. To be honest, she doesn’t really want to know. She picks up her spoon and starts eating. It’s incredibly delicious. It seems to be partly vanilla ice cream and partly fruit: but light and delicious. She thinks it’s probably lychee, and kiwi, and lime. It’s wonderful. Nothing’s too heavily flavored, and despite their garish coloring, the sprinkles go down just fine.

Betelgeuse has finished half of his shake. He reaches over and grabs an eyeball, tossing it up into the air and catching it in his mouth. He chews slowly and swallows, almost purring, his eyes lidded and dark. “Are ya ever gonna try the eyes, Lyds, or are ya too chicken?” He gives her a look which she doesn’t really know how to interpret. It’s challenging, and dark, and almost lustful. Which seems a little weird, but Lydia tries not to think too deeply into it.

Lydia looks down at the eyeballs which now comprise most of what’s left in her dish. The dish was chilled, or something, so none of the ice cream had melted. There’s a few bites left, and a little sauce and cream and banana, and also five eyeballs which she has very clearly been avoiding. She eats the rest of the non-eyeball stuff before responding, licking her spoon to get the last traces off. It really was delicious.

When she looks up, he’s staring at her in a way which can definitely only be described as hornny. There’s no confusion in her mind about that one. He shakes his head and looks at her again, this time normally, but he still doesn’t say anything.

Lydia picks up an eyeball, which may have been a mistake. It’s slimy and somewhat warm. It’s deeply repulsive, to be honest, and not something she has any desire to eat.

She pops it into her mouth, determined not to give Betelgeuse the satisfaction of being able to call her a chicken. She steels herself and bites down. It releases a flood of cold, fizzy, lemony syrup into her mouth, the chewy thin outer coating collapsing on her tongue. It’s delicious. But she doesn’t notice this, because a shriek echoes through her head and she jumps, clapping a hand to her mouth.

Betelgeuse laughs hard, bending over the table. “H-how did you not see this coming?” he cackles. “I said it was eye scream, babes, not ice cream. It’s written on the fucking sign outside!”

Lydia’s heart is beating very fast. Having someone scream inside of your head is somewhat startling even when you expect it. She chews without thinking, and discovers how yummy the eyeball is. This distracts her for a moment before Betelgeuse starts talking, and then she can’t help but laugh. She’s angry and startled and suddenly everything is overwhelmingly hilarious. Did this perverted asshole bring her all the way out here just to get her to eat a screaming eyeball?

Betelgeuse grins at her and slurps down some more of his shake. “They’re pretty great, huh?”

Lydia takes another. The scream is still disconcerting, even though she expects it, but the eyeball is ridiculously tasty. She smiles. “Yeah, they kind of are.”

They sit in silence for a bit, Lydia eating eyeballs and people-watching, and Betelgeuse sipping his milkshake and Lydia-watching. At last he finishes his milkshake with an incredibly obnoxious slurping noise and a loud belch, and he leans back in his side of the booth with a sigh. 

“So where do ya wanna go next, babes?” he asks.

“I don’t really know. This is a date, right? So what do people usually do on dates in the Neitherworld?”

“Well, we could go to the drive-in theater, or to the park, or the beach, or the mall.... I dunno, Lyds, we pretty much have whatever ya can think of.”

“I’d kinda like to go to the park,” she says. She’s very curious. What would a Neitherworld park look like? She’d certainly like to see the other ones too, but she’s never been much of a beach person, given how sensitive her skin is, and she’s already seen people and shopping areas. The park would be a whole new cup of tea, though.

They stroll out of the now deserted eye scream parlor, and she slides across the driver’s seat into the passenger seat. Betelgeuse snaps himself back into his striped suit, hops in, and slams the door shut after himself. Doomie’s headlights pop up, and they zoom off down the street, fishtailing horribly. Betelgeuse laughs like an absolute madman, and Lydia grins a little herself, though she grips tightly onto her seat.

They get to the park after a few minutes of ridiculously fast and reckless driving. Strangely enough, there aren’t any other cars on the highway, for which Lydia is thankful. She doesn’t want to see anyone run off of the road or otherwise injured by her husband.

They arrive at the park in a cloud of dust. There are other cars here, and Lydia can see some people walking along the paths. The park looks pretty normal: very much like Central Park, with grassy lawns and lots of trees. 

“This park is split into sections,” he says. “This is the deciduous section. There’s a part which is a desert, a part which is all snow and ice, an ocean, a tundra, grasslands, you name it, it’s in here. I thought this would be more your speed.”

The park seems to believe that it’s summer, so it’s obnoxiously luscious and verdant. Betelgeuse sticks his hands in his pockets and follows her as she traipses into the park. He makes gross comments every so often, but lets her wander deeper and deeper into the forested part of the park, away from the paths and the grass and the people, following the strange and exotic flowers and animals she sees, always deeper in. Eventually, after they haven’t seen a person for five minutes, he grins. 

“Lydia...” he hisses, his tongue captured between his teeth, grabbing her by the upper arm and spinning her around.

Lydia looks back at him, a bit startled to have him stop her so abruptly. “What,” she says, annoyed by his interruption of her exploration.

“I’ve done a whole lotta stuff for ya today, babes,” he says. He’s grinning in a very nasty way. “I think ya owe me something in return.”

“What?” Lydia squeaks. She’s realized what he’s let her do. He’s gotten her to lead her away from the safety of other people. He’s gotten her in debt to him. She’s wearing a very short dress and she’s in his world and she doesn’t have a way to get away. “I owe you shit! You did this stuff, I didn’t make you.” 

He leans over her in a distinctly dominating way, backing her against a thick, old tree. It’s covered in red moss, so it’s soft against her semi-bare back, but that’s hardly comforting with the way he’s leaning over her, forcing her to look up at him, eyes literally glowing with lust.

She’s horrified to discover that she’s very, very turned on. She can feel that the thong he put her in is actually getting damp, and she rubs her thighs together uncomfortably. She can’t help but find him sexy, despite how gross he is, especially after the dreams. They were fucking hot, okay? And he’s not bad looking: he’s muscular and a little chubby and tall and he’s funny and charming and interesting. And, of course, he’s very dominant and very much wants to fuck her. That doesn’t hurt his case at all.

Her pussy is suddenly hit by a rush of cold air, and Betelgeuse brings something up to his nose, and she connects the dots, paralyzed by his audacity. He’s fucking juiced off her thong. And he’s smelling it. And now he knows she likes this. His eyes are closed, and he brings his hand back down and slips the underwear into the pocket of his jacket. He leans his forearm against the tree, trailing the fingers of his other hand up her arm. 

“Oh, babes, I knew ya liked me, but I didn’t know how much....” His words are deep and low. “Lyds, I’m your husband. I’m literally the only person you can have sex with. I know you’re probably pretty frustrated by now. This isn’t just for me, you know. You want this, I want this. Nobody else gives a fuck, and I’m certainly not going to judge you. You’re sexy, and I want you too.” He presses his hips into her stomach, and she can feel the proof, hard and thick against her.

He runs his thumb along her mouth, and slips his thumb between her lips. She lets him do it. She knows he’s right. She wants him, and she should stop being silly and enjoy herself. She’s been horny for so damn long. 

He tastes like heavy water and dirt, but it’s not bad. He presses down and opens her mouth. She feels spit pool around his thumb where it’s pressing into the center of her velvety tongue, and she can’t help herself from curling her tongue up to press against him.

He pulls his thumb out and she stands there with her mouth open for a second before she snaps it shut and swallows. He holds two fingers out to her. Absently, Lydia recognizes that his fingernails are now normal, bitten to the quick instead of clawlike and sharp. “Suck ‘em,” he says, and she leans forward and takes them into her mouth. He stays still, and she sucks hard on them, trying to take them into her throat. She’s salivating hard, running her tongue up and down and trying to wiggle between them. He has long, thick fingers, which is kind of sexy. She gets lost in it for a minute, but then he pulls his fingers out slowly. She makes sure to leave them wet, and knows she’s guessed right when he slips his hand under her dress, yanking it up with his wrist as he runs those two fingers along her labia. She’d shaved before calling him, and she’s still smooth. The spit is almost unnecessary with how wet she is. His touch feels electric, and she shivers a little, spreading her legs slightly and bowing her head. He brings her head up with a touch of his hand and draws her into a kiss at the same time than he slides both fingers into her. She gasps into his mouth, and he takes that as a signal to start devouring her, sliding his long, long tongue into her mouth and fingerfucking her hard, rubbing her clit with his thumb. 

Lydia is clinging onto his shoulders, her legs spread wide and her head backed against the tree. She’s kissing him back as well as she can given the savagery which he is displaying, but she wants him to know that she’s participating and wants him. She can feel her slick dripping down her legs in long rivulets, and the noise his fingers are making are obscene. He flicks his free wrist and her dress is gone, leaving her completely bare before him. He grabs her breast, pinching her nipple and massaging, and moves his mouth down to attack her neck. Lydia takes the opportunity to slam her head back against the tree and moan encouragement. She cums hard, tensing up and curving against him, her legs giving out halfway through. He holds her up somehow and keeps rubbing her gently through it. She feels amazing. Amazing! It’s been so long since she came.

Lydia looks up at Betelgeuse with a whole ton of adoration. He just made her cum! Her brain is mushy and happy and subby and wonderful. He’s looking down at her and smiling and she thinks to herself that he looks like he likes her. Not just horny, but fond. Then he drops whatever juice he’s been using to hold her up, and she collapses to her knees. Something comes up behind her and ties her arms together behind her back from wrist to elbow, pushing her chest out and forcing her up. At the same time, her ankles are tied tightly to her thighs, forcing her to stay on her knees. 

She looks up and finds that she is directly in line with the intimidating bulge in Betelgeuse’s pants. She stares as he unbuttons his pants, sliding down the zip and pulling out his cock. He’s nice and thick and long and uncircumcised. Lydia almost laughs as her brain supplies the thought that that’s appropriate for the time period when he died. She’s going to blow a guy who’s been dead for over six hundred years. This thought is lost when he grabs up her hair in his fist and brings them together, rubbing the slick head of his cock over her lips as if asking for entrance.

Lydia opens her mouth at once, allowing her tongue to peek out just a little bit. He slides himself inside and she closes her lips around him and sucks, tonguing the underside of his cock. He’s uncomfortably large, and she can feel the strain in her jaw from how she has to hold it cracked wide open in an attempt to keep her teeth away from him.

Betelgeuse is enraptured. He stares down at Lydia, engrossed by how her cheeks hollow as she sucks, fingering the hair he has captured in a tight fist. He lets his other hand caress her cheek, feeling the muscles work under the tips of his fingers as he trails them down her face. She feels wonderful. This is the first action he’s gotten other than his hand in over a year, and before that it was all cold, stiff dead women. Nothing wrong with that, but the way that Lydia is so hot and warm and pliant is just wonderful. She’s not doing a bad job, either.

He holds still and starts to pull her head back and forth, trying to get deeper. He didn’t position her well for anything like deepthroating, but he knows that if she can keep herself from gagging he can get deep enough to feel some really nice throat action on some of his dick, at the very least. He keeps his thrusts shallow at first, but eventually starts to probe more seriously at the back of her throat. He pushes a little harder on the back of her head and suddenly pops through, the head of his dick no longer on the back of her tongue but instead inside of her throat.

He can feel the difference: the involuntary, uncoordinated constrictions, the change in texture, and the huge increase in overall tightness. He holds himself there, savoring the duality of the way her tongue is running along a previously unexplored part of his dick and how her throat is massaging the head of his cock. He sits there for probably too long before remembering _shit_ breathers need to fucking breathe when she gags around him and starts struggling, trying to move. She can’t get up any kind of leverage or real fight with the way he’s bound her, which is awfully hot, so he stays inside of her throat for another long moment before pulling back out onto her tongue and letting her get a few good breaths.

He wants to see her struggle again. This doesn’t make him a good person, probably, according to someone -- what does she think of this? he wonders for a second -- but he knows who he is and likes who he is and is definitely ready to enjoy himself for once in his goddamn afterlife. He pushes back into her throat without so much as a by-your-leave, thrusting gently back and forth and enjoying himself deeply.

Lydia’s working hard to get him off. She’s a little scared by the way he cut off her air, but also deeply aroused. It makes her mind even more fuzzy, her stomach even more tingly, and her pussy even more wet. A great part of it is her desire to please him, but she also doesn’t want him to get too carried away. She’s not sure her throat can take too much. She wants to trust him but also doesn’t, which is hot but a bit concerning. Not much she can do about it either way so she just works harder, sucking him down and trying her very best to stimulate whatever part of him he offers to her.

He keeps up the pattern for a bit before it becomes too much: thrusting lightly into her warm, tight, wet throat, enjoying her tongue on him, the suction: loving the way she chokes and squirms and tears up and looks up at him through her wet eyelashes, begging him for air. He’s showing her that her being able to breathe means less to him than his own damn pleasure, and both of them know it. It’s too good for him to last long though, and after several long, long minutes, conscious of her throat -- he wants to do this again for sure so he doesn’t really want to fuck her up -- he pulls back into her mouth.

“I’m gonna cum, baby girl,” he growls, petting the sides of her face and stroking her hair. “You’re gonna take it, yeah? Like a good girl should.”

Lydia sucks harder in acknowledgement and he lets himself go, pulsing long ropes of cum into her mouth. She swallows, and swallows again, and sucks, and it’s really, really great. He’s finishes and he’s leaning over her, one hand braced on the tree, panting unnecessarily, and she’s still gently sucking on the head of his cock. He pulls out of her mouth and tucks himself away before dissolving her bonds and picking her up. She’s still totally naked, which he doesn’t seem to care much about. Lydia’s collapsed in his arms for a good portion of the walk back but then she realizes: they’re going back to a populated area. And she’s totally naked.

“Betelgeuse!” she says, voice hoarse from overuse of her throat. “Stop! Stop, you can’t keep going, I’m naked, there are people out there!”

“So what?” he says gruffly, clearly completely unsympathetic to her plight. “You’re hot. It’ll make their day or some shit.”

“Please? I’ll owe you...” Lydia says, stroking the arm wrapped under her knees. He’s strong, and his arm is nice and solid. “Just a dress, something, anything. Please, baby?” Her voice is soft and pleading. Somehow she feels like desperation would not convince him. She’s right: it would probably make him hornier.

“Fine, fine,” he grumbles, and she’s dressed in a knee-length lace dress. Looking down, Lydia sees that if you concentrate on it, it’s see-through. Whatever. She reasons that nobody will be looking at her anyway aside from Betelgeuse, since they should just be going straight home.

Betelgeuse carried her all the way back to the car and drove them both home. They chatted casually, Lydia somehow feeling more comfortable with him.

When they got back to the garage, Betelgeuse simply juiced them straight back to his bedroom. 

Lydia yawned deeply, clapping her hand over her mouth. She suddenly felt incredibly tired. “Betelgeuse?” she asked, voice thin. “I wanna sleep. Can you sleep? Will you stay with me?”

“I can’t sleep any more, but I’ll stay with you. Not here, though. Let’s go to your place.” Before Lydia can say anything, he pulls her to him and they spin back into her room. The startle of the travel doesn’t shock Lydia as much as the first time, but it still pops a bit of awakeness back into her. 

“Let me just go get ready for bed,” she says, and trudges off to the bathroom. After washing her face, brushing her teeth, and flossing, she walked back to the bedroom. Betelgeuse was in bed, his lap covered by her comforter and his chest completely bare. Was he naked? Was that sanitary? Whatever. Lydia changed into a long ratty t-shirt and panties and slid into bed. Betelgeuse scooched down as she got in, pulling her to him once she was under the covers. He spooned her tightly.

Lydia felt herself relaxing. He was large and comforting and cool, which was nice against her overly-warm skin. He snuffled into the back of her neck and hugged her tight, his arm slung casually over her stomach. After a minute, his hand crept up to cup her breast and squeeze gently. Lydia didn’t do anything, too close to the brink of sleep to care. He sighed happily into her hair, which was the last thing she remembered before she fell asleep.

The sunlight slanting across the room right into her eyes woke her up. Reaching across to her nightstand for her phone let her know that it was 8 a.m. Then she realized. Where was Betelgeuse? She stood quietly and listened hard, trying to tell if he was still in the house. He certainly wasn’t in her bed. 

As far as Lydia could tell, the house was completely silent.

Somehow, this was devastating. Lydia knew that she was being foolish, but she’d really thought that he was going to stay with her. It hurt, somewhere inside of her chest. What had she done wrong? 

No! She shook her head hard. Thinking like that would only lead to despair. She hadn’t done anything wrong. If he left her, it was because of him. He had no reason to go, as far as she could see, going off of how he had treated her last night. He’d seemed happy and okay with things.

Lydia sighed. There was only one way to check this. “Betelgeuse... Betelgeuse... Betelgeuse.”

Suddenly, the mattress was a bit more sloped, and Lydia fell backwards into his arms. He’d appeared directly on the bed, a beer in one hand, fully dressed in his striped suit. “Hey babes!” he said. “What’s up? Missed me?”

“You dick,” Lydia said. “Where were you? Cheating on me already?”

“Babes!” he said, looking deeply wounded, before taking a long pull on his beer and staring off into the distance as though looking deep for the words he needed. “I would never. I could never. You know the clause -- you read the handbook.”

“Yeah right, like the great and powerful ghost with the most can’t find a loophole in everything.” Lydia spoke his self-proclaimed title with a great deal of sarcasm. 

“I can’t. Sometimes there isn’t a loophole. In this case there isn’t, but the benefits of being free far outweighed being stuck in a crypt or the Neitherworld for eternity, even if I could have sex with whoever I wanted.” 

“Then why did you leave,” Lydia said. It was a question, although she didn’t really phrase it as such. She found herself suddenly incredibly tired. Not sleep-tired, but emotion-tired. It had been a weird couple of days. She was used to a far greater degree of calm simplicity, certainty, and routine. Her time with Betelgeuse, while fun, was exhaustingly different from her usual life.

“I wanted a beer. I was gonna come right back but you just happened to wake up while I was out getting it. See?” he said, brandishing the chilly can. He wormed an arm under her and hugged her close. Having her soft body pressed against his was deliciously tempting, but also just very nice. She was so warm and pliable. 

Lydia closed her eyes and snaked an arm over his chest, molding herself to his side. He was undeniably strong, with the muscles to prove it, but also nicely chubby. It made for great cuddling, even if he was a bit cold. He was warming up slowly the longer he stayed under the covers with her. Were dead people like lizards? She pictured Betelgeuse sunning himself under a heat lamp and laughed. 

“What?” he asked. 

“Nothing,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” he said in a mock menacing voice. He threw the beer into the air, where it disappeared before it could hit something and cover everything with crappy alcohol. He flipped over, straddling Lydia and rucking her shirt up to tickle her. Lydia squirmed and bucked, trying to shake him off as she cried with forced laughter. She was really, really ticklish. How the hell did he know that?

“N-no! S-stop...” she panted through gales of laughter. “I give... I give up! I’ll t-tell you, just please stop!” The last part was shrieked as he found a particularly sensitive spot on her ribcage, and she gave a particularly hard jerk, trying her best to dislodge him. It was impossible. He was so much stronger than her.

Betelgeuse couldn’t help but get turned on by this. She was squirming deliciously below him, flushed and happy, and almost humping up against him. When she gives in he’s almost disappointed. 

“Tell ya what, sugar,” he purrs, sliding one hand up her sensitive torso to cup a breast, her nipple tightened with artificial goosebumps. “I’ll let ya off the hook if ya give me somethin’ good.” He adjusts himself in his pants ostentatiously, making his meaning as clear as possible, licking his lips and leering down at her. 

“A-alright,” Lydia pants, still out of breath. 

He leans down and claims her mouth, tongue probing at her lips to request entrance. When she opens her mouth in shy surrender, acquiescing to his demands, his efforts become feverish, tongue tangling with hers and lips slipping slickly across hers in a frantic effort to become closer to her, deeper inside her, to join with her slick heat.

He paws indelicately at her chest, pinching and groping luxuriously, more for his pleasure than hers. He fumbles, yanking her shirt up over her head, having to break the kiss to get it off. He pauses and stares down at her, as she’s bare, displaying herself before him for the first time in real life. Her skin is luminously pale. He can see blue veins tracing along her chest, which is small but nice. He finds that he rather likes her translucent rosy-pink nipples. They’re taught, almost begging to be sucked, and he finds himself mouthing her breasts before he even decides he wants to do it.

She moans and grabs his hair, pressing him to her. He sucks marks into the sides of her tits and up her neck, savoring the taste of her skin: salt and sweat and alive-alive-alive. It’s intoxicating, being able to taste her: to taste a person for the first time in six centuries. He really, really wants to taste her pussy.

He lifts himself up with his arms, looking at her face for a moment. Her mouth is open and wet, and she’s blushing all the way down to her chest. She looks at him with desire. It’s very, very gratifying. He shoves himself back down and drops between her legs, vanishing her panties and plunging his tongue into her slit.

His tongue is limber and long, striped green and purple. Why? Who knows? Lydia certainly doesn’t care. He’s doing wonderful, amazing things, sucking on her labia gently, biting her thighs, flicking circles around her clit and tongue-fucking her very effectively with that long, thick tongue. Her thighs are shaking. She looks down over her tummy to see him staring back at her, his pupils like a snake’s, his eyes slitting seemingly uncontrollably when he catches her eyes. His assault becomes even more aggressive, determined to bring her pleasure, and she plunges her hands into his hair, tugging hard to try and get him to back off. He doesn’t, and it shoves her quickly over a cliff into a shaking orgasm. It’s glorious. He brings her gently through it, and leaves her pussy with a final suck on her clit which sends electric shivers up her spine. She collapses, her arms and legs falling open limply. He’s a god. He can do anything now: she’s so happy. So relaxed. She likes him a whole, whole lot more than she thought she would. His moss even seems somewhat endearing.

“Babes,” he says, his voice deep. “Can I tie ya up? It’d make me _real_ happy.” He conjures rope, running it between his hands almost anxiously. 

“Sure,” Lydia says, her voice thin, failing to properly even get out the “r” sound at the end. She coughs, taking a deep breath for what feels like the first time. It’s like she’s been reborn. “Sure,” she tries again. This time, her voice is stronger, and she sounds certain. “How do you want me?”

“Sit up facing away from me and hold your elbows behind your back,” he says. She complies, and he quickly winds the rope around her, tying her arms behind her back in a chest tie which forms a pentagram above her tits. He grabs onto her tits from behind and yanks her back against his cock. Conjuring more rope, he ties her ankles to her thighs. The ropes are tight and solid. Lydia flexes against them and they bite into her a little. She feels herself sinking into a soft, agreeable state even as she feels herself getting wetter. She’s not worried about anything. She feels safe and adored.

He ties a soft, opaque cloth over her eyes and the world goes dark. Lydia strains her eyes up and down, but can’t see any light. She lets her eyes drift shut, focusing on her breath and the ropes around her, relaxing slowly. She feels a thick, callused finger probe at her lips and lets her mouth fall open, only for a ball gag to slip in, stretching her jaw and causing drool to start pooling in her mouth. She knows she’s going to end up covered in her own spit, but it’s in no way a bad thought. It feels right. It’s what he wants. And it’s also really, really hot.

“If ya want me to stop just snap your fingers. Can ya do that for me, just ta test it?” Lydia snaps her fingers compliantly, almost shocked by how loud the noise is. It jolts her, making her realize how far under she’s slipped. She consciously relaxes herself, trying to return to the headspace she adores.

He tips her forward slowly, giving her time to arrange her head comfortably so that she’s balanced securely on her chest, knees, and head. The bed is pretty hard (it makes her back happy), so she doesn’t sink unpleasantly or bob about as he moves.

He gathers her hair, tying it with another piece of rope. He gives it a tug to make sure it’s secure, and Lydia moans embarrassingly, blushing hard at the sound she lets loose into the quiet air. He chuckles, which makes her flush harder, and runs a hand over her upturned ass as if in apology for his humiliation of her.

Lydia hears a cap pop open, and then slick fingers are probing at her asshole, pushing gently as if politely asking admittance. She tenses hard, considering whether to snap her fingers. She really hadn’t considered anal before that one dream he’d given her. She decides that if he tries to put his dick in her ass, she’ll snap. For now, she’ll wait and see what happens. He turns his fingers, worming one in and slowly pushing it in and out, working her open. He brings the other hand down to her slit, slowly rubbing at her clit. Lydia tries to focus on the feeling of his hand on her clit. She’s never done anal in real life, and the sensation feels very foreign and somewhat unpleasant. He slides another finger in alongside his first, scissoring and twisting. After a moment, he pulls his fingers out, wiping them somewhat disgustingly on his suit. Thankfully Lydia can’t see that.

Then something cold and smooth and large is pressing insistently at her ass. Lydia squirms. It’s too big! There’s no way it’ll get in. What even is it? What is he doing? Betelgeuse pushes harder, pressing his hand down into her back. It pops into her, feeling enormous. The stretch hurts, although her sphincter closes happily around the much thinner stem of the object. It’s very cold, and she feels herself cramp a little. Hopefully it’ll warm up to her body quickly. It presses down and in harder, and Lydia realizes what it is. An anal hook? Really? Betelgeuse ties the end of it onto the rope tied into her hair, tightening it until Lydia’s back arches beautifully, pressing her gorgeously plump ass up into the air and pushing her face harder into the bed. Drool pools under her as she pants, the hook feeling incredibly solid, forcing her to conform to its demands. If she tries to relax, it forces her back into this tense, arched position. She squirms, feeling it shift within her. Suddenly, she feels something drip down her leg, and all of her attention focuses on her pussy. She’s achingly, throbbingly horny.

Betelgeuse juices off his clothes. His cock slaps up against his belly. He’s been leaking precum for the last twenty minutes, deeply turned on by how beautifully Lydia submits to his demands, and when his cock bounces, a string of pre stretches and snaps between his dick and his stomach. She’s gotten hers, now it’s time for him to finally, finally get his. If she cums again, that would be a lovely bonus, but he isn’t concerned about that. He honestly just wants to get his dick inside of her as fast as possible.

He watches her for a second, looking at her clench and open around the hook in her ass, watching her gape for a second. He runs a finger around her hole, enjoying seeing it clench up again. He likes hearing her squeak as her butt tightening back up moves the ball inside of her, forcing her ass to once again open around it.

Alright, that’s enough. He grabs onto her hip with one hand, guiding himself into her with the other. He’s big, and she’s small, and she hasn’t been prepped other than her one orgasm, so when he gets himself in, she groans and tries to shift, barely able to move from the combination of the hook and the ropes. It’s awfully titillating to see her forced to take him like that, and he shoves in hard, forcing himself all of the way into her in one strong, spearing thrust. She constricts around him and screams, muffled by the blanket and the gag, jolting forwards. His eyes roll back in his head with pleasure, completely ignoring her protests at his mistreatment of her pussy.

She’s so warm and so wet and so tight. It’s amazing. He almost cums, but pinches the base of his dick and feels the edge retreat. He hasn’t had sex this good in forever. Things hit differently when you’re dead: you can’t really feel that much, and everything’s cold. Sex is mostly mental, which isn’t bad but definitely isn’t good. He made the best of it: he’s a very imaginative guy, which is one of the reasons why he’s so powerful, but even he can’t make sex after death actually good. He feels like a teenager again, discovering why guys fight so hard for this shit. It’s amazing. She smells so good too: musk and sweat -- she has goosebumps, but her back is slick with her exertions. He slides his hands up and down her back, almost soothingly, although he only does it because he wants to feel her muscles shift, feel her heat, feel how alive she is under him.

Somehow, the fact that she’s letting a dead guy fuck her is really erotic. Thinking of that makes him makes his dick jump inside of her, and he thumps gently against the ball in her ass. It’s glorious, so he grabs her ass, leans over her, braces his knees, and starts fucking her hard.

She’s moaning and twitching and amazing. The noises are great: the slickness and the suction and the slapping of his hips against her. He thinks that she’s trying to hump back against him but it’s honestly really hard to tell with how effectively he’s tied her down. She can barely move.

He growls horrible things, threats and promises of what he wants to do to her, loving the way she reacts to each of his suggestions with horrified, excited noises. As he gets closer and closer to the edge, his suggestions get more and more affectionate, and his tight, grasping hands soften on her, caressing her aching flesh instead of claiming it.

Lydia is overwhelmed. With the blindfold, it feels as though everything is amplified. She’s hyper-aware of the pain-stretch in her ass, of the violation and burn and pleasure of his cock thumping inside of her, of the tight ropes and the aches of her muscles, stretched into a position they don’t enjoy and can barely hold. She’s drooling copiously, her tongue flexing unconsciously against the rubbery ball in her mouth, her eyes twitching under the blindfold. She’s so tense, so tight, so overwhelmed. And suddenly she cums, twitching and jerking, stimulating herself uncontrollably against the two cool, solid objects inside of her. This makes Betelgeuse groan loudly, and he plunges in hard, fucking her quickly, barely pulling out, basically just grinding into her. He cums inside of her, and she can feel every jerk of his cold, solid cock. He collapses on top of her for a second, bracing his arm on her shoulders. 

After cumming, Lydia feels the aches and stretches from the rope, the hook, the gag in her mouth come rushing back. She groans at the discomfort of his arm pushing her down, intensifying the stretch in her ass and the arc of her back. He pulls out of her with a rush of fluid down her thigh, thankfully removing his weight from her back. She bears down and feels more cum bubble out of her, making a pleading noise in hopes he understands her and lets her out.

Betelgeuse snaps his fingers and the rops fall off of her. He eases the hook out of her ass and tosses it away into thin air. He cuddles her to him, ignoring the liquids covering her thighs and ass, and unbuckles the gag, drawing it out of her mouth.

“That was amazing, babes,” he says, almost out of breath, which makes no sense given that he’s dead and has absolutely no need to breathe. He undoes her blindfold and lifts it off, moving his hands down to massage her arms where the rope has left pinkish-red indentations from her struggles. “You were so good for me.”

Lydia tucks her head into his neck, cuddling him back, winding her arms around him and collapsing against him. He _whoofs_ out a burst of air, pretending to be overwhelmed by her weight, falling backwards and taking her with him. He praises her gently, running his fingers through his hair, over her arms, and down her back, bringing the covers up over the two of them to keep her warm. He knows that people can get overwhelmed, scared, or depressed after an intense round of sex like that, and he wants her to know he’s there for her. Also, he’s finding that he’s becoming quite fond of her. He thinks she’s sexy, and nice, and wants to stick around. Part of that is definitely taking care of her.

He feels when she falls asleep, whuffling tiny snores against his chest. Her fingers grasp unconsciously at his chest hair, tugging lightly at the curly, coarse stands. He holds her close and stares up at the ceiling, wondering where she might want to go next. He’s surprised to find that he’s excited to learn what she wants, and wants to take her there more than he wants to force her to follow him to somewhere he wants to go. He feels his cock waking up again against her soft thigh, which is slung between both of his hairy, muscular ones, but he ignores it and closes his eyes, resting his head against hers, closing his eyes to feign sleep with her. To feel normal and alive for just one moment.


End file.
